Innocence Lost

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.