Thoughts on Newtown, Connecticut

At about 0930 on Friday, 14 Dec 2012, a man entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and murdered 20 children aged 6-7 and 6 female staff members including the principal.

However, this is not the worst U.S. school murder ever. On 18 May 1927 in Bath Township, Michigan, a man committed 3 bombings and killed 38 elementary school children, two teachers, and four other adults; at least 58 people were injured. The perpetrator first killed his wife, and committed suicide with his last explosion. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7–14 years of age[1]) attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history.

Apparently a 20-year old man with some degree of various personality "disorders" killed his mother and stole her legally owned firearms, specifically a Bushmaster AR-15 type rifle, a Glock and a Sig-Sauer pistol, went to the school. Shot his way through the door in some manner, went into the school and then went one room to another shooting children and staff as they appeared until the police response arrived and then shot himself. Among the details not in question is his shooting of individuals multiple times each and the reported expenditure of "hundreds" of rounds. (He could have actually expended about 150 rounds and still shot the victims 5-6 times each.) Whether or not he was aiming at the victims at ranges not exceeding about 35 feet or if he was simply shooting "from the hip" we might not ever know. 4 or 5 weapons were found at the scene, those mentioned and 1 or 2 others with what appears to be a shotgun found in the trunk of his mother's car.

Most of what I now know about the Sandy Hook event comes from various news reports and the reliability of those reports is in doubt. However, many people including, inevitably, the politicians have already reached various conclusions about what should be done based mostly on dogma supported by these "reports". In fact what we are discovering is that nothing the press has reported and not all of what the coroner has said in the news conference was accurate. So pretty much everything can be suspected as inaccurately reported for the moment. Still, the rush to ban guns, despite polls showing this is the LEAST desired course of action, continues.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C. S. Lewis