We should arm teachers, we are now being told. Of course, we should. While we are at it, why not arm five year olds, then we can all start a blood bath together. The last one left standing can then shoot himself. Why settle for murder; go the whole way and make it murder - suicide. I have an idea for a cartoon; it is 12 psychotic lonely white guys pointing their bushmasters at a 5-year-old with one of them yelling at the kid, "Why the hell don't you have a gun to defend yourself?"

How ironic. When Peter took out his sword and struck off the ear of the son of the high priest, Jesus did a horrible thing and restored it. How dare He. If only Jesus had been borne a few centuries later He could have been President of the National Musket Association (NMA) and given Peter a real dressing down for failing to get a clean shot right through the man's heart. After all he was only standing a yard away... for crying out loud.

Ross Douthart a Catholic writer in an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times writes, "In Fyodor Dostoyevsky's famous novel, Ivan is the Karamazov brother who collects stories of children tortured, beaten, killed - babes caught on the points of soldiers' bayonets, a serf boy run down by his master's hounds, a child of 5 locked in a freezing outhouse by her parents.

Ivan invokes these innocents in a speech that remains one of the most powerful rebukes to the idea of a loving, omniscient God - a speech that accepts the possibility that the Christian story of free will leading to suffering and then eventually redemption might be true, but rejects its Author anyway, on the grounds that the price of our freedom is too high.

"Can you understand," he asks his more religious sibling, "why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? ... Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much?"

Perhaps, Ivan concedes, there will be some final harmony, in which every tear is wiped away and every human woe is revealed as insignificant against the glories of eternity. But such a reconciliation would be bought at "too high a price." Even the hope of heaven, he tells his brother, isn't worth "the tears of that one tortured child."

It's telling that Dostoyevsky, himself a Christian, offered no direct theological rebuttal to his character's speech. The counterpoint to Ivan in "The Brothers Karamazov" is supplied by other characters' examples of Christian love transcending suffering, not by a rhetorical justification of God's goodness." Perhaps the notion of a suffering God might help a little, though it hardly takes away the sting of such profound loss.

GUN MADNESS

This week we learned that an ostensibly sensible woman, a teacher of children no less, kept a semi-automatic bushmaster rifle, a multi shot Sig Sauer and a Glock for "self defense". This was in a bucolic neighborhood known more for horses and half million-dollar homes. Who was she expecting a visit from, the New Jersey Mafia? When was the last time someone in her neighborhood needed one firearm, much less three, in order to defend their property, lives or the lives of loved ones?

And then there's the thoroughly banal argument that guns don't kill people, people kill people. The very slogan is shallow, hollow and vacuous, allowing death and violence to stalk the streets, homes, schools, malls, cinemas, temples and churches of America by lonely, disturbed white men killing with impunity. (No they are not black, Islamic fundamentalists, Mexican banditos or Al Qaeda operatives). This begs the question, why is it easier to purchase guns in this country than it is to vote? Why is voter registration and regulation more important than gun registration and regulation? Why is access to guns more readily available than access to mental healthcare, writes one blogger?

So the question must be asked why are our children less valuable than NRA lobbyists? Does anybody really believe that cigarettes don't kill people, people who just inhale them do? We have all sorts of restrictions when you get a car license and there are responsibilities: no drinking and driving, no weaving, buckle up, stay within speed limits, no texting...and the list goes on and on.

HUNTING

I grew up in New Zealand where deer hunting is a way of life for many. I used to go on deer shoots with my cousin and his father. He was a better shot regularly bringing down 12-pointers. We used single-shot .303 rifles to give the deer a fighting chance, ancient weapons by today's standards. When I asked him recently about keeping such guns in his home he wrote:

"All of our guns by NZ law have to be kept in a locked cupboard. The NZ police come and inspect where guns are kept and a character reference of the gun owner acquired from three different individuals who know the gun owner. The police can revoke this license if they choose and remove rifles from anyone with a criminal record or who is deemed to be mentally unstable. The bolt has to be taken out of the rifle. The ammunition has to be kept in a separate place. I now own a 6.5 x 55 rifle this is for deer and a .22 which is for rabbits. In our home only my wife and I know where the key to my security cupboard is. Each holder has to go through a gun course and pass an exam. After being granted a license that license is only valid for 10 years, at which time it comes up for renewal and further police scrutiny."

No one wants to keep legitimate American hunters from owning guns, weapons that can safely be stored away from children and the prying eyes of strangers. Certainly, most Americans understand that in some parts of this country, firearms are important tools and part of bona fide sports and activities. The NRA however wants EVERYONE to own a gun and so today there are nearly 300 million weapons owned by Americans and each one is capable of killing someone. No one needs an assault rifle unless they plan on killing people.

Guns are responsible for roughly 30,000 deaths a year in America; more than half of those deaths are suicides. In 2010, 606 people, 62 of them children younger than 15, died in accidental shootings. If the US were as mature as the countries of Europe, where strict gun control is the norm, the federal government would have a much easier time curtailing the average citizen's access to weapons. "The people themselves would understand that having guns around puts them in more danger," writes Jeffrey Goldberg in the December issue of the The Atlantic.

VOL's readers around the world were aghast at the massacre when they heard the news. Here is how one conversation I had with one of them went. Note the irony:

READER: Why do Americans feel they have to own a gun at all?
VOL: It has to do with freedom.
READER: Freedom from what and whom exactly?
VOL: For a while it was the Russians but they failed to materialize. We're not sure but the Iranians might come if they ever build a navy and if the Afghanis ever come out of the Stone Age they could be a threat as well.
READER: So you're saying that if every family and household in America owns a semi-automatic weapon or even a 9-millimeter Glock you will be free.
VOL: You got it. Our freedom, our way of life and democracy depends on it.
READER: Democracy. What are you talking about? My country has had democracy for over 300 years and no one feels that we are, or would be freer, owning a gun. We have something called elections. Don't You?
VOL: Every two and four years, but you can't be too careful. The Government might be taken over by Commies, Muslims and Socialists like Bernie Sanders and then you'll need a gun. You can't be too careful.
READER: But if everyone owns an assault rifle how can you be safe even going to a diner or box store to buy necessary things like food and clothing you might get killed by a lonely white guy who never had a father who hugged him. What's free about that? Didn't you have some crazed loon in Pennsylvania kill a bunch of Amish kids...people who don't believe in light bulbs let alone guns?
VOL: They should have owned guns...and light bulbs.
READER: But no one could have stopped him any more than the lone gunman in Newtown, Ct who barreled his way into the school waving guns.
VOL: You're missing the freedom bit.
READER: So you are prepared to take the risk now of just stepping out of your homes?
VOL: Yes and if we die buying milk and bread we are really FREE. We go to be with Jesus and that's the ultimate freedom.
READER: You people are crazy.
VOL: No we're not we just want to be free to kill each other. This is America after all. And don't forget if you really are too afraid to go outside again you can order everything from AMAZON.COM and NETFLIX. So my suggestion is buy their stock, it's bound to soar. You can always make a buck in America even if they're shooting through your front door.

THE 2ND AMENDMENT

We are told it is unconstitutional to undo American history. Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA, documents the actual history in Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to bear arms in America. Guns were regulated in the U.S. from the earliest years of the Republic. Laws that banned the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813. Other states soon followed: Indiana in 1820, Tennessee and Virginia in 1838, Alabama in 1839 and Ohio in 1859. Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas explained in 1893, the "mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law abiding man."

Congress passed the first set of federal laws regulating, licensing and taxing guns in 1934. The act was challenged and went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1939. FDR solicitor general Robert H. Jackson said the Second Amendment grants people a right that "is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only one which exists where the arms are borne in the militia or some other military organization provided for by law and intended for the protection of the state." The court agreed unanimously.

Fareed Zakaria writing in TIME magazine said things started to change in the 1970s as various right wing groups coalesced to challenge gun control, overturning laws in state legislatures, Congress and the courts. But Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by Richard Nixon, described the new interpretation of the Second Amendment in an interview as "one of the greatest pieces of fraud - I repeat fraud - on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.

"So when people throw up their hands and say we can't do anything about guns, tell them there are being un-American-and unintelligent," concluded Zakaria.

EVIL IS TO BLAME

J. Christian Adams writing at his blog said this; "Pay close attention to what gets blamed for the Newtown school shooting. Evil is to blame for these horrific murders and nothing else. Listen closely to the rhetoric over the coming weeks. How often will evil be named as the cause of the horror?

"Not often, I suspect.

"Some dispute the existence of conscious, deliberate, unseen evil. Perhaps that's why blame for the murderous horror will fall elsewhere. Some consider the mention of evil in public discourse to be unseemly. Belief in pure deliberate evil can be inconvenient, because it includes other necessary beliefs.

"Failing to name it evil lets evil flourish. If the sight of planes slamming into the World Trade Center towers wasn't enough to comfortably believe in evil, maybe the horror in Connecticut will.

"Denial of conscious, deliberate evil makes it easier to deny the existence of conscious and deliberate good. If deliberate evil exists, then deliberate good must also. A man in Connecticut accepted evil."

Already a pantheon of psychologists are weighing in on the shooter's state of mind and his diseases. I have not heard one talk of the evil that resides in the human heart. Much of the carnage we've seen is probably due to mental illness. But we're not going to commit those who are simply different, or even those unwilling to be treated. They must act first. And there is nothing in this latest saga to indicate that a lack of financial resources prevented this person from getting needed mental health.

There are two great commandments that Anglicans recite regularly in church and it is this: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. That's the story of this Christmas, and that's why the evil in Newtown must be called by its true name.

GUNS AND KIDS

I have two adopted grandchildren from Vietnam, a country once torn apart by the US, and the thought of them growing up in a land loaded with guns makes me shudder. What and who will stop some mad murderous lonely white guy high on meth or manic-depressed (please don't blame autism, thousands of Americans are autistic and they don't blow kids away) going into their school next week and doing a copy-cat of the Newtown massacre? Nothing of course. By the time SWAT teams arrive it will all be over, the children dead scattered about like rag dolls on a bedroom floor and the same assault rifles so beloved by the NRA will once again be held up as a banners of liberty and freedom. Arming teachers is to add one more layer of insanity.

When I was a child I sang a chorus in Sunday School which formed my own racial views and allowed me decades later to briefly pastor a Church where no face shared the same skin tone as mine. It went like this:

Jesus loves the little Children
All the little children of the world
Black and yellow, red and white
All are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world

No one who belongs to the NRA can sing this song with a straight face. It would be a huge lie. The 300-year experiment with democracy is winding down in America. We are destroying ourselves from within as most civilizations we are told do. Dr. Os Guinness in his latest book A FREE PEOPLE'S SUICIDE, sustainable freedom and the American future writes that there is always a moment in the story of great powers when their own citizens become their own worst enemies. This week we saw it elevated to a new level. No one is safe anymore, anywhere. No one. And as we go down we are taking our freedoms with us at the point of a gun. We have judged ourselves and we have been found wanting. It is not just Rachel weeping for her children any more.

END

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