Thursday, December 27, 2012

Will Newtown Lead to New Day?
               
               As the Out-of-town media roll out of Newtown after the last funeral, and the focus of the all day news channels returns to a renewed countdown to the fiscal cliff many are wondering if Newtown will lead to a turning point in the war against gun violence or just another scary number (27 dead, 20 of them children). If England was able to enact major changes to its gun laws after the Dunblane school massacre in 1996 and Australia found a reason to give up most of their guns after the Port Arthur massacre, why didn't American make any significant changes after Columbine in 1999 or Virginia Tech in 2007 or the Aurora in July, 2012?  
              This latest massacre pushed President Obama to finally jump off the cliff and call for a commission to look into what can be done to stop the violence. Something he was unwilling to talk about even after the massacre in a movie Theater in July.  But that unfortunate event happened in the middle of an election and this one happened 11 days before Christmas.  After several days of conferring on what would be the best way to respond the NRA decided to release a statement. If only we had guns in every school we would have no more tragedies like this.  However that didn't work in Columbine. Many people responded to Newtown by giving up their guns at gun by back events like this one in Los Angeles. Others are using Facebook to encourage people to post their random acts of kindness
              No matter when these act of senseless murder occur they always inspire a lot of talk and very little action as the national spotlight moves on to the next distraction.  If no major changes come out of this it is bound to happen again.  Its not a matter of if but when. "If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, now incable must Man be of learning from experience." George Bernard Shaw. 

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