A Tragedy Too Close to Home

                                                         December 14, 2012                                          
                                                      Newtown, Connecticut                                        

    By now, most of the English speaking world must be aware of the almost unthinkable tragedy that happened yesterday just a few towns away from where I live and work. Newtown, CT  is a fairly affluent suburban community in an affluent state of an affluent nation; the kind of town where most people would be happy, and indeed fortunate to live and raise their children. The kind of town were you would feel safe at any hour of the day or night.  My two daughters started swimming competitively in elementary school, and the team that they practiced with and swam for was in Newtown. 

    It is, of course, impossible for any normal person to understand what could prompt a human being with any conscience or moral compass to do what was done yesterday, most especially the deliberate and methodical killing of twenty very young and completely innocent young children in their school. It is equally impossible to make sense out of it, because it doesn't make sense, and it cannot. Losing a child is one of the most difficult blows for any person to withstand emotionally, and now many families and an entire community are faced with just that, to say nothing of the families, friends  and colleagues of the slain adults as well. At present, It does not appear that I knew any families directly effected by the events of yesterday, but one of my office employees has a daughter who works in another elementary school in Newtown. My older daughter's first full time teaching job was in another nearby town; the principal who hired her at that school, Dawn Hochsprung, was the principal who was shot and killed in Sandy Hook yesterday. 

    In April of 1999, our family was on vacation on Grand Cayman. While we were there, we became friendly with an older couple who owned a condo in the complex where we were staying. He had just retired as an OB-GYN, having practiced in Littleton, Colorado. While we were there, the dreadful school shooting at Columbine High School took place; he had delivered many of the high school kids who were shot that day, and it devastated him. He and his wife have kept in touch with us since then; I was never really sure why. Perhaps today I know. 

    Our hobby, harmless as it is, models conflict and war, and as the in the case of the martial arts class coeds that I related in "War College", can be seen as glorifying war, and with it death and destruction. Some of us have military experience; others may be fervent pacifists  Some indeed, might be both. Since I have been on an "old school" path recently, in this regard I think that no one has ever said it better than H.G. Wells, in his 1913 classic, Little Wars:

    " And if I might for a moment trumpet! How much better is this amiable miniature than the Real Thing! Here is a homeopathic remedy for the imaginative strategist. Here is the premeditation, the thrill, the strain of accumulating victory or disaster—and no smashed nor sanguinary bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor devastated country sides, no petty cruelties, none of that awful universal boredom and embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or embarrassment of every gracious, bold, sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old enough to remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence. 

    This world is for ample living; we want security and freedom; all of us in every country, except a few dull-witted, energetic bores, want to see the manhood of the world at something better than apeing the little lead toys our children buy in boxes. We want fine things made for mankind—splendid cities, open ways, more knowledge and power, and more and more and more — and so I offer my game, for a particular as well as a general end; and let us put this prancing monarch and that silly scare-monger, and these excitable “patriots,” and those adventurers, and all the practitioners of Welt Politik, into one vast Temple of War, with cork carpets everywhere, and plenty of little trees and little houses to knock down, and cities and fortresses, and unlimited soldiers—tons, cellars-full—and let them lead their own lives there away from us.

    My game is just as good as their game, and saner by reason of its size. Here is War, done down to rational proportions, and yet out of the way of mankind, even as our fathers turned human sacrifices into the eating of little images and symbolic mouthfuls."

    I trust that I might be forgiven for ending this sad topic on a somewhat political note. Granted that there is no way to completely protect yourself or those you love from the acts of a seriously deranged individual(s), we have seen far more mass shootings in this country over the years than any other developed country. While I have no interest whatsoever in hunting, I have nothing against those who enjoy it. That having been said, perhaps this time we as a nation will take some meaningful action to start to break down our "culture of the gun", and markedly restrict and control access to them, especially hand guns and assault rifles. "Guns don't kill, people do", the NRA will say. True, but it is pretty difficult to kill large numbers of random people in a short period of time with knives, bows, or what have you. The person most likely to be killed a by a gun is... the owner of that gun, whether by accident, or by another member of their own family, as was evidently the case in Newtown. Our friends in Australia have already conducted this experiment; the rate of homicides there dropped dramatically following the institution of strict gun control laws.  So as we pray for those impacted by this unthinkable tragedy, perhaps *this* might be the time that we as a nation finally might be moved to take meaningful action to reduce the ready access to firearms that exists in our country, with such gruesome and heart rending consequences.

                                                       December 14, 2012                                            
                                                     Newtown, Connecticut Newt