The End of the Affair

Maybe the American love affair with weapons is waning.  Thousands of us are murdered every year by guns in their various forms but it was the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut last week that seems to have been the proverbial last straw.

Almost every one of the victims shot by Adam Lanza was killed by one of these.

It's the civilian version of the military's M-16 and it's called a Bushmaster.  Not exactly something you'd take to go shoot deer.  It's designed to kill people and it does so very efficiently.

Everyone has an opinion about what happened at the Sandy Hook Elementary School last week and we are no different.

We can't believe that anyone could have seen this young man and not have immediately assumed he was insane.

Adam Lanza was taught to shoot guns by his mother, Nancy, who we can only assume was crazy in her own right.

Now we don't assume to know the answers but we have some hypotheses we're working on.

We've watched enough episodes of Law & Order to know that when you shoot someone in the face it's a very personal killing.  This kid shot his mother in the face four times so it looks as if it was very personal.

It also appears that when Nancy and Peter Lanza divorced, he got a new wife and she got herself a whole shitload of guns.

Nancy got a divorce settlement of $250K annually which allowed her not to work and to patronize the local bar on its craft beer nights and shoot guns.  Oh, and she liked landscaping too.

Peter Lanza has not claimed his son's body, but by all appearances he had no use for him when he was living either.  Would be very interesting to find out what busted up the marriage.

This was one angry young man but he was also a coward.  You notice he didn't waltz into an NFL locker room looking for trouble.  No, he went to his town's elementary school where children and teachers do not pack heat and are sitting ducks for someone who has no empathy for humanity and a whole lot of rage. He murdered 26 of them before he finally killed himself.

The pain that he caused to the families of those he killed, his community, the country and the world is far worse than anything he himself could have felt.

If we are serious about not having this happen again we must remove assault weapons and the necessary multi-shot ammo clips from sale.  We do not need to arm our educators.  They are teachers not gunslingers.  Take the assault weapons out of the equation so that no one can procure them.

There seem to be too many angry, insane people in the United States who go to the available weaponry when their mental illnesses spiral out of control.  Adam Lanza was just one of them.