December 14, 2012, my brother called. In anguish, he told me he had just heard that Sandy Hook Elementary, the school my niece and nephew had attended, not a mile from his home, was the scene of horror.
All he knew then was that several children and some adults had been shot. The narrow country roads quickly filled with police cars, fire trucks, many ambulances and panicked families, all rushing to the school. It was 9:20 a.m. on a sunny Friday morning. Children had just been dropped off to attend what everyone assumed would be a normal school day. Instead Sandy Hook became the scene of the worst school massacre in our country.
I have attended many school events at Sandy Hook Elementary and Newtown high school over the years. I have stayed at the historic Newtown Inn for many family holidays, so this is all painfully close.
What we know is that a twenty-year-old man, known by school officials, mental health workers and certainly by his family, as mentally unstable, even dangerous. He was living reclusively with his divorced mother in an affluent neighborhood. |
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| He took three of her legally owned guns, including a Bushmaster .223-caliber model XM15-E with high capacity 30-round clips. He shot his mother in the face while she was sleeping, drove to Sandy Hook Elementary, broke in, and slaughtered 21 six-year-olds in the first grade, shooting them not once, but multiple times, and six adults, including the principal and several teachers before killing himself.
We do not know why.
We do know that his mother did not know how to help him, and that she knew he was unstable, yet she had guns in the house. Basically, that is all that is known.
The first responders, those first to enter those three classrooms, are haunted by what they found and probably always will be. The families and the residents of Sandy Hook and adjacent Newtown will never ever be the same.
Some believe the country will never be the same.
Of course, gun violence and public massacres have been increasing month by month over the years, on college campuses like Virginia Tech, high schools like Columbine, theaters like Aurora, public events like Gabby Gifford's in Tucson, frightening numbers of drive-by urban shootings and on and on and on.
This time though, because so many little children were killed, and surely, because Newtown, which is on the historic register, an upscale Connecticut, safe country town…where bad things are not supposed to happen…this time.... Maybe we the people have had enough. Maybe. Maybe not.
Enough of what?
Enough of the NRA holding the second amendment sacrosanct, untouchable. Follow the money and the answer is there every time. The big NRA money comes from those who make the most money from guns and weapons of all kinds. The NRA is their gun lobby, with very long tentacles, which reach deeply into our communities, its voters and consumers, and into politicians' pocketbooks.
Cloaking themselves and their four million members in the Constitution, the NRA works every day all year long, doing everything it can to make sure nothing will limit anyone owning any weapon or gun of choice, without regard for a nation now living in fear of the next bloodbath.
But this time, just maybe, something will change. The American people are finally on to the NRA and their tiresome, whiney, macho, gun-rattling rants. Their words now ring loudly hollow and their credibility is waning even among some if its own members.
The question for the country and also here in Vermont is, do we accept our country as violent and, if not, do we have the will to change the culture?
There was a time, not so long ago, when my generation was in school, when we had no fear of gunmen randomly shooting to kill us. Why was that a more innocent time? What changed? Is it possible to return to that time? Maybe.
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Can we agree to make it impossible for criminals, terrorists and those diagnosed as dangerously mentally ill to purchase any weapon they want, and as many as they want—by legally effective background checks enforced in the retail and private gun sale market?
Can we ban all assault weapons? Limit their ammo clips?
Can we make our police and mental health system more responsive to dangerously
mentally ill people? Are any of the above too hard to accomplish?
Maybe. Maybe not.
To Vermont gun owners, Vermont NRA members, Vermont politicians: Have you got the guts to ask yourselves what you want for your children and grandchildren? You too must have been shattered by what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary. You too must remember American childhoods free from school gun violence. Do you not think that what happened in Sandy Hook could happen in any town, any school in Vermont?
Looks that way. The Vt. Senate decided not to address this issue in this session. Only Vt. Rep. Linda Waite-Simpson of Essex still remembers the terrible gun violence at Essex Elementary School in 2006. Vermont police do.
When will you have had enough?
Will it take more children being shot like the children of Sandy Hook? What will it take?
When is enough enough?
At the end of the day, we can only do what we can do. That's the point. It's up to us to do something. Write to those who can affect change. It's so easy. Google the name of any U.S or state representative or senator. Their email address comes up. Send them your message. That's something. Right, Gabby?
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