Like everyone horrified by the recent events at Sandy Hook Elementary, I want to find some explanation, however hard to swallow, some lesson or ground for progress to take from this horror. So, this piece from today's Washington Post caught my eye:
I tend to land on the libertarian side of issues. So I am sypathetic to gunowners' interests -- though I don't own guns, never have, have shot one maybe three times (at a couple of Utah rifle ranges), and have always been timid to do it, worrying about the kick, etc.
But also I am for freedom of consenting adults to have sex. And it seems we hear a lot more admonition about responsible sex than responsible gun ownership and use among those who claim to own guns purely for target practice, hunting and/or self-defense.
I suppose guns do provide a measure of increased protection to ordinary folks outside of law enforcement. But it seems I hear a lot more about guns being deployed by seemingly ordinary folks to kill family members or other innocent ordinary folks than I do about a gun actually providing a means to the ownener's prtecting himself or herself from violent crime.
One thing that that seems common sense and can be learned from Sandy Hook, is that having the kinds of firearms that Adam Lanza was exposed to around his house makes it easier to do what he did.
There has been a lot of false information come out in the early frantic hours since the Sandy Hook catastrophe. I recogize that the stories now circulating about Nancy Lanza's gun fettishes and multiple gun and live ammo stashes around her suburban house and gun love indoctrination of her severely mentally ill son may turn out to be totally false.
But if this information is true, Nancy Lanza does not seem to have engaged in responsible gun ownership. Certainly she knew better than anyone the fragile quality of her son's mental state, his loneliness and rage. It seems to have been questionable judgment to have included in her home schooling of wretched Adam Lanza a familiarity with and love of guns that can murder and main dozens of people in a matter of minutes or even seconds.
So whatever the facts, I hope something that comes of this is increased gun owners' awareness of the need to be responsible gun owners; to exercise sound judgment. Maybe like alcohol, marijuana, tobacco and sex, the solution isn't banishment, but education and increased enlightenment that the high of gun ownership carries risk and tremendous responsilbity.
By Peter Hermann and Michael S. Rosenwald,
Saturday, December 15,
NEWTOWN, Conn. — Adam Lanza lived among guns.
His mother, Nancy, collected them. She showed them off to her landscaper.
“Guns were her hobby,” said Dan Holmes, the landscaper of Nancy Lanza’s sprawling yard here on the edge of town. “She told me she liked the single-mindedness of shooting.”
Holmes said she even spoke of taking her son to the firing range to practice his aim.
As details of her son’s troubled life trickled out Saturday, the day after he gunned down 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School and his mother at their home, the portrait emerging is one of a detached killer who knew his way around a trigger and of a family that feared outsiders in the home.
* * *
Her former sister-in law, Marsha Lanza, told the Chicago Sun-Times outside her home in Crystal Lake, Ill., that Nancy Lanza wanted guns for protection. “She prepared for the worst,” Marsha Lanza told the newspaper. “I didn’t know that they [the guns] would be used on her.”
Saturday, December 15,
NEWTOWN, Conn. — Adam Lanza lived among guns.
His mother, Nancy, collected them. She showed them off to her landscaper.
“Guns were her hobby,” said Dan Holmes, the landscaper of Nancy Lanza’s sprawling yard here on the edge of town. “She told me she liked the single-mindedness of shooting.”
Holmes said she even spoke of taking her son to the firing range to practice his aim.
As details of her son’s troubled life trickled out Saturday, the day after he gunned down 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School and his mother at their home, the portrait emerging is one of a detached killer who knew his way around a trigger and of a family that feared outsiders in the home.
* * *
Her former sister-in law, Marsha Lanza, told the Chicago Sun-Times outside her home in Crystal Lake, Ill., that Nancy Lanza wanted guns for protection. “She prepared for the worst,” Marsha Lanza told the newspaper. “I didn’t know that they [the guns] would be used on her.”
But also I am for freedom of consenting adults to have sex. And it seems we hear a lot more admonition about responsible sex than responsible gun ownership and use among those who claim to own guns purely for target practice, hunting and/or self-defense.
I suppose guns do provide a measure of increased protection to ordinary folks outside of law enforcement. But it seems I hear a lot more about guns being deployed by seemingly ordinary folks to kill family members or other innocent ordinary folks than I do about a gun actually providing a means to the ownener's prtecting himself or herself from violent crime.
One thing that that seems common sense and can be learned from Sandy Hook, is that having the kinds of firearms that Adam Lanza was exposed to around his house makes it easier to do what he did.
There has been a lot of false information come out in the early frantic hours since the Sandy Hook catastrophe. I recogize that the stories now circulating about Nancy Lanza's gun fettishes and multiple gun and live ammo stashes around her suburban house and gun love indoctrination of her severely mentally ill son may turn out to be totally false.
But if this information is true, Nancy Lanza does not seem to have engaged in responsible gun ownership. Certainly she knew better than anyone the fragile quality of her son's mental state, his loneliness and rage. It seems to have been questionable judgment to have included in her home schooling of wretched Adam Lanza a familiarity with and love of guns that can murder and main dozens of people in a matter of minutes or even seconds.
So whatever the facts, I hope something that comes of this is increased gun owners' awareness of the need to be responsible gun owners; to exercise sound judgment. Maybe like alcohol, marijuana, tobacco and sex, the solution isn't banishment, but education and increased enlightenment that the high of gun ownership carries risk and tremendous responsilbity.
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