Another massacre ... in Connecticut

Elementary school massacre: 20 children among 28 killed in Connecticut slaughter - U.S. News: A teacher's son, clad in black and carrying two 9mm pistols, rampaged through a Connecticut elementary school Friday, killing 20 small children and six adults, a tragedy President Barack Obama said had broken the hearts of America.

Damn, I am getting so freaking TIRED of this!

I don't know about you, but I feel like a tether-ball being bounced back and forth on what seems to be a daily basis.

When I wrote about the most recent Mall shooting, in Oregon, I found it easy to blame that part of the American Culture which wants to ban all guns and let the Government take care of us.   But guns are still also a part of that culture, and nothing will stop a madman (I've decided to let the "Sick Fuck" nomenclature be a term which you will automatically translate the word "madman" to mean) who will steal a gun or two or three.

And of course merely making guns illegal, and confiscating all private firearms, will not stop this.  Australia and England have thoroughly proven that THIS is not a workable solution.  Even the nullification of the Second Amendment would stop this kind of senseless slaughter.

No more workable are all of the restrictions which America has tried to impose ... most notoriously in the 10-year 1994 "Assault Weapons Ban" which "sunsetted" because it had proved that restricting access had no demonstrable effect on "gun violence" except to make it harder for sane, honest citizens to defend themselves.

Once again, we're reduced to trivia and tears: trivia, because you can't legislate effectively against violence especially by 'restricting' the means to impose the violence;  tears, because when even the most well-intended governmental restrictions don't work we weep from both grief and frustration.

Because we cannot even defend our children.

I was a child during the Truman and Eisenhower years, and I recall as a ten-year-old being worried about some kind of nameless threat.  I worried that someone would try to hurt me; in retrospect, I think it was because my fourth-grade teacher Mr. Gorman had teased us with imaginary tells of the "Sherwood Slaughterer" who would creep though our bedroom windows and night and steal us away, never to be seen again ... alive.

Then I reasoned:  "I'm only a little boy.  Why would anyone want to hurt me?  And I found comfort in  that pre-pubescent syllogism.

Now I realize that my fears were not entirely irrational.  Oh, perhaps they weren't so immediate during the mid-1950's, but today I wonder that all of our children are at risk from the day they are born.

Suddenly we're back to the Thirty Years War.   During that dark period of the 17h century, no man, woman or child was safe against the predation of English, French, Spanish, German .. all of the (essentially "mercenary") ... armies which roamed across the face of Europe; the populace was the source of food, supplies, and 'entertainment' by the all-but-leaderless armies whose commanders worried only about defeating their enemies and feeding their armies.  They had little or no concern for 'protecting the people'.

Today, our governments are all about "The People" .. but they still cannot provide the internal security against this new breed of 'mercenaries'.  We have our own 'predators', but we call them 'madmen'.  (see definition, above).

Here is a Sixty-Minutes look at the .. event:

Perhaps one 'answer' ... or at least part of the answer ...may be found here.

Or another viewpoint here.


What is the source of these 'madmen'?  Are they all psychotic?  We would like to think they are.  I know that *_I_*  prefer to think of them as such.  Who else would slaughter innocents with such apparent gay abandon?  And they almost invariably climax their attacks with self-immolation (usually with the now-classic "self-administered gunshot to the head).  It's almost as if they believe, somehow, that their willingness to take their own life will be understood as their own personal acknowledgment that they know they did something unforgivably wrong, and they are willing to take responsibility for their actions.  So, that makes everything okay, right?

 I don't really think so.

In Dante's "Inferno", he describes nine circles of hell.  Essentially, each circle is reserved for violators of one of the Seven Deadly Sins.   It seems to me that these madmen are candidates for at least five of the nine circles, and I personally hope that they serve subsequent, rather than concurrent terms in HELL for the evil which they do.

We can just forget about our concerns for their mental states.   There is more than hormonal imbalances involved here.  These people are not just sick.  They are evil.  Some of our religions advise us to hate the sin, and forgive the sinners.

This particular bunch of sinners are exceedingly hard to forgive.   It's easy for us to take this approach, if our religion advocates that philosophy.   Even for those who make it almost impossible for us to forgive then;  after all,  if they were truly evil, would they then suicide when they realized that they had done the evil?

I am not that religious.   These attacks, however, make it much more attractive for me to to believe in Heaven, for if there is a Heaven, there must also be a Hell.

I very much hope there must be a Hell.  And tonite, Satan must be feasting and doing the Macarena because his new Best Boy is roasting.  Appropriately named ... Adam.

Hopefully, for all of eternity.

Bon Appetite, Satan.