Sandy Hook- Ten Years Later, Precious Little Has Changed

Republicans, The NRA, and the gun lobby should be on the fast track to Hell

Ten years ago today- December 14, 2012- 26 innocent people were slaughtered. Six adults and 20 first-graders were murdered by a madman with a weapon of war and nothing on his mind but killing as many kids as possible.

Why? Who knows? These things never make sense. But, if they did, we might be able to figure out how to stop mass shootings before shooters get their hands on the tools they use to carry out their awful deeds.

As it is, we’re left to mark an anniversary that we should be able to use to say, “Never again!” Sadly, because of the intransigence of Republicans, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and the gun lobby, little of substance has changed. Mass shootings remain part of the background noise of American life, something we should have been able to eliminate yet have never found the cojones to do.

The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, should’ve never happened, of course, but at the very least, it should’ve served as a watershed moment. It should’ve been a wake-up call for all Americans, regardless of where we call home on the ideological spectrum. That there are those willing to condone the slaughter of children as the price of freedumb freedom is unconscionable, but oh, so American.

I still remember where I was standing on that day when my wife called to ask if I'd been watching the news. I hadn't.

As she told me what had happened in Newtown, Connecticut, her voice started to break. I remember feeling sick to my stomach and rushing home to process it all with her. As the parent of two young children at the time, watching the story unfold in the hours that followed—my body had an almost visceral response to the unthinkable terror in those classrooms and hallways; to the final unnatural seconds of those beautiful young lives, and to the unfathomable loss of the families of those lost.

As horrific as that event was, over the coming days the pain was exacerbated by the response of Conservative politicians and pastors, who rather than standing in solidarity with those grieving families—decided inexplicably to double down on guns. They blamed the massacre on God being taken out of schools, on unarmed teachers, on mental illness, on the media, on anything but the prevalence of high-powered weapons of mass carnage

Gun rights became the hill they would gladly allow others to die on, which has happened with sickening regularity.

• Pastor John Pavlovitz

I remember the days and weeks after Sandy Hook when the cry was “Never Again!” But, sadly, the NRA and Gun Owners of America, whose headquarters is, ironically, also in Newtown, put up fierce resistance, saying it was too soon and that any response risked “politicizing” a tragedy.

In not so many words, the gun lobby was telling us that the only appropriate response was no response. Or to wait until people and the news media had moved on from Sandy Hook to other issues, in which case there would be no response.

I read a jaw-dropping online defense of these weapons from a California woman recently. Guns, she said, are just tools. Like spoons, she said. Would you outlaw spoons simply because some people use them to eat too much? Lady let’s see you try to kill twenty school kids with a spoon.

• Stephen King

Over the past ten years, there have been many opportunities to make tangible progress. Ban weapons of war. Ban high-capacity magazines. Keep weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill. Strengthen background checks.

But, alas, those who worship the 2nd Amendment- the most willfully misinterpreted 27 words in the English language- would have none of it. Instead, ANY move toward anything that smacked of sensible gun control policy was viewed as chipping away at their inalienable, immutable, God-given gun rights.

Guns have become a virtual religion in America. It can be said that guns have more rights than women and minorities. Why? Because 2nd Amendment fetishists value guns more than human life, as long as the lives being sacrificed don’t belong to anyone they know or love.

The hypocrisy is as astonishing as it is inhuman.

Semi-automatics have only two purposes. One is so owners can take them to the shooting range once in awhile, yell yeehaw, and get all horny at the rapid fire and the burning vapor spurting from the end of the barrel. Their other use- their only other use - is to kill people.

• Stephen King

Astonishingly enough, some of those who defend guns with the most fervor are Christians who you’d think would make it their mission to safeguard human life.

Ah, contraire, mon ami. The American Taliban- people like Mike Huckabee, James Dobson, and their ilk, are closely tied to the gun lobby and 2nd Amendment fetishists.

John Pavlovitz wrote about this in the days shortly after Sandy Hook:

I am a Christian.
I am a pastor.
I am a father.

As all three of these things, I apologize to the world (and to the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting), for Mike Huckabee and James Dobson and people like them.

This week these self-appointed representatives of American Christianity have done what they seem bent on doing and content to do in times of tragedy; they have stood on top of someone else’s pain and grief while preaching a message of dreadfully misplaced anger, fear-infused hatred, and horribly dangerous theology.

These self-styled “men of God” metaphorically stood atop the bodies of six adults and 20 children and poured salt into the wounds and grief of their survivors. It’s their standard schtick after these types of tragedies. But, unlike their Christ, who consoled the bereaved, they actively seek to make things worse in the name of Jesus Christ.

The message they preach- “dreadfully misplaced anger, fear-infused hatred, and horribly dangerous theology” has nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Then again, they know nothing of the love, compassion, acceptance, understanding, and tolerance the Lord and Savior they claim to revere preached. They’re more Pharisees than they could ever claim to be Christians.

During a time when most people (both religious and non-religious), have rallied around terribly hurting people to express heartfelt condolences and great anguish; when they’ve sought ways to somehow bring hope and healing to a devastated nation—Huckabee and Dobson have chosen instead to blame the victims.

It’s your fault.

God is pissed-off at you.

Apparently, having a mentally unstable young man, whose childhood seems filled with dysfunction and oddness brutally murder his mother, grab an arsenal of her own weapons, break his way into an elementary school and mindlessly butcher classrooms full of first-graders and those caring for them— well this is all God’s way of protesting abortion and gay marriage and lack of prayer in schools. It has nothing to do with mental illness or the proliferation of guns, of course.

Yes, America; YOU brought this on yourselves through your godlessness, your addiction to abortion and pornography, and your drive to push God out of the public square. YOU chose to live a life without God at the center, and now he’s taking his anger out on you.

This is all YOUR fault. This wasn’t the shooter’s doing, it was YOUR fault.

OK, even ten years later, it doesn’t take an advanced degree in Bullshit Detection to ferret out the distinct scent of cow feces emanating from this theory.

1. How do these American Taliban stalwarts know this to be true?

2. Do they commune with God on regular weekly conference calls?

3. If so, shouldn’t they be heavily medicated and committed to a mental health facility 24/7/365?

4. Even as an atheist, I know that this isn’t what Christianity is about. This isn’t how it works. This isn’t how ANY of it works.

5. Let’s be honest, y’all. It’s not about God. It’s about the Benjamins.

It seems clear that Huckabee and Dobson never considered some things that would obliterate their case if they bothered to do their research.

It makes you wonder which snack food they got their Divinity degrees from. I’m thinking Fiddle Faddle, but I could be wrong.

That God gives people free will and that free will enables some to make catastrophic choices, like the one a young man inexplicably made last Friday. Some things (as incomprehensible as they are) are exactly what they are—not veiled signs of something else needing interpretation by religious experts with agendas.

That God is not in the “nation” business, but the people business; that Jesus came to create a people; a new community defined not by a border or government or continent, but by faith in Him. There is only one nation in the eyes of God, and He builds and disciplines it one person at a time.

So you see, God (yes, the one I don’t believe in, but work with me here, willya?) isn’t an ill-tempered, mean-spirited son-of-a-bitch. Unless you catch him on Fridays when he had a rough back nine. That could get a little dicey. Generally speaking, though, the Christian God is benevolent, not one who gets off on randomly smiting humans for shits and giggles.

Anyway, back to Sandy Hook. Ten years later, and after “Never again!” precious little has changed. That’s a sad commentary on people that God really SHOULD smite- Republicans, NRA, and the gun lobby. Because of their intransigence, untold thousands of innocent people have died. To say they have blood on their hands would be an egregious understatement. They’re up to their nipples in blood.

How many more must die? How many first-graders will never live to see second grade? How long will Republicans, the NRA, and the gun lobby continue to idly stand by while innocent people die?

I’m not going to ask how many more dead Americans are enough, because we already know the answer. Unfortunately, it’s never enough, so we need to continue pressing for real change. If not today, then tomorrow. If not then, then the day after. And so on, until the dam breaks.

Enough blood and tears.