Another generation lost it’s innocence yesterday amid a hail
of gunfire in Connecticut.
The gunman burst into classrooms at an elementary school and
targeted children between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. Twenty children fell
victim to the gunman’s wrath before he turned his weapon on himself.
The ages of the victims and the fact the massacre took place
inside a classroom has left an entire nation in shock and disbelief. We have
grown accustomed to mass shootings in the U.S. and the typical reaction is,
“Where now?” when we hear of another tragic series of senseless acts of
violence.
We all took a step back yesterday. These were children who
had never done anything wrong. School is supposed to be the one place where our
kids are safe from the evil in our world. Where they learn their A, B, C’s and
how to add 1 and 1. We spend our lives trying to teach them that monsters
aren’t real and in one morning we all learned that monsters really do exist.
Yesterday’s tragic events left us all feeling stripped and
vulnerable. If this can happen in Connecticut, what is going to prevent the
same thing from happening here…to my child?
We think of the other times in our lives that we lost our
innocence and were left feeling vulnerable or scared.
We lost a part of our innocence when we learned that
musicians like John Lennon could be assassinated for what they say. We lost
more of it when we watched the Challenger burst into a ball of fire in front of
our eyes. We lost a lot more when we saw a firefighter carrying a child’s body
from the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. We
all sat in stunned silence when we learned that children could be the “evil
monsters” and schools weren’t safe at Columbine High School. Just when we thought
that we had no innocence left we learned that passenger aircraft could be
turned into weapons on 9/11. By the time the massacre at Virginia Tech happened
we were already becoming numb to the effects of violence and a loss of our
innocence.
One of my college professors told me that he had a concealed
carry permit and did carry on campus despite state law prohibiting weapons
shortly after the attack at Virginia Tech. This professor stated that the
ability of an armed individual to storm a lecture hall had been a thought prior
to the VT attack. He said he carried despite the law because if he ever needed
it he doubted he would be prosecuted.
The time to debate how we protect our children is now. We
can’t wait until the next tragedy to have this discussion.
I don’t know if my professor was right. Maybe we need to arm
our teachers. Maybe we need to post armed guards at gates onto school property,
much like you see at military installations. I don’t know what the right answer
is but I know we need to do something.
Gun control alone will not change things. The weapons used
in Connecticut were legally obtained by the first victim, the gunman’s mother.
We are obligated, as a “civilized society,” to seek out the
answers and make the necessary changes to prevent another tragedy like this
from occurring.
We shouldn’t need to sit down with our children and try to
explain to them how this could happen. This time of year we should be sitting
with our children talking about letters to Santa, why they can’t open their
presents yet and why they should be thankful.
This morning there are 20 children who will never do any of
those things again. There are 20 families asking why.
We have a greater responsibility to those families. We have
a responsibility to the children who lost their lives senselessly and our own
children.
Our children lost their innocence yesterday.
We need to make the changes necessary for them to live in a
safer world before they become as numb to the loss of their innocence as we
have.
