Sandy Hook

by a3_nm on Wikipedia

When we first moved to the US, and I started blogging, I thought I would write about guns. I never did. I didn't want to talk about them. Not when I found bullets stacked like candy at a checkout; not when my kids came home from a play date talking about how their friend had showed them all his rifles; not even when the father of one of our friends was murdered whilst out jogging. Not after Fort Hood, or Tucson, or Aurora. I still don't want to write about guns now.

I took my kids to school yesterday morning, as usual with no other choice than to expect that they would still be alive when I came to collect them. My kids were calm and happy and so, it seemed, were all the other children. The parents and teachers, however, were not. I saw in their glassy, tired eyes what I felt in my stomach: a layer of grim resolve that had crusted over the mess of sickening horror and helplessness. We easily exchanged fake smiles and happy greetings, like toy money for wooden food. The other parents and I were all in the same boat, trying to carry on normally, not to show how scared we were. God knows how the teachers were coping, how they had got through the weekend. I wanted nothing more than to hug every one of them, but of course we were putting on a show of strength, denying our vulnerabilities for the sake of the children.

I'm sure a lot of children are upset, and I don't think that is a bad thing. Mine - and seemingly most kids at our school - are not and this isn't a bad thing either. They were fine all day, apparently. Fine whilst they wrote letters of condolence to an elementary school so like their own; fine whilst they conducted drills, working out how twenty-five kids could hide in a classroom should a man with an assault rifle ever prowl the hallways - all overseen, presumably, by wonderful teachers whose voices didn't crack, whose hands didn't shake.

These women are now front-line protection for our children, because we didn't want to talk about guns.

Although expressly designed to injure and kill, guns would still be awful even if one had never been fired at a human being. Guns are cheating. The destructive power of a speeding bullet has not been earned by the person pulling the trigger; they have not flexed superior muscles, demonstrated greater cleverness or exercised better judgement. Nobody needs such an unnatural advantage, unless they are living in the wilds and plagued by wolves or bears.

If you live in a city, you don't need a gun. They should be banned. It is not impossible - this is, after all, a country that made alcohol illegal if you can believe it, and if you can ban that, you can ban anything. Nobody needs a semi-automatic assault rifle. Walmart doesn't need to sell them. Arms manufacturers can make plenty of money hawking their wares to the armed forces of the world. It can be done, if only those people who are obstacles would stop thinking of themselves as victims, put the guns down and step away.