Sanity About the Newtown (CT) School Massacre

by Richard Kostelanetz (January 2013)

Shocked through we all are to learn of the terrible massacre in CT today, may I state again what should be obvious to all who think the problem through:

Mass shootings become possible only when no one else present has a gun. They could never happen in an Israeli school, where an armed guard is prepared to take out anyone posing such threats. Even a middle-aged female American teacher with a licensed weapon in her purse could have prevented this massacre.

What I wanted to do was make my friends initially and perhaps people generally UNDERSTAND truths that are not being heard. This second aim accounts for why I publish this article.

The answer to my puzzle apparently turns upon understanding how the National Rifle Association was hijacked by extremists in the 1970s. The NRA then became a DC lobby courting conservative Republicans, thus driving knee-jerk liberals to a contrary, ultimately unliberal position. (Similarly, whereas non-Catholic conservatives should in principle defend personal choice apart from state intervention regarding abortion, liberal advocacies drove their knee-jerk conservatives into a position unnatural to them.) Ironically perhaps, an armed citizenry prevents NRA extremists and their kind(s) from taking over our country.

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