letter to the editor

When will it end?

Tue, 12/13/2016 - 9:45am

Dear Editor:

We wept in anguish that day four years ago when a deranged gunman slaughtered 20 children and seven school staff members.

The killings on December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School will be forever remembered as a monumental failure of otherwise law-abiding gun owners to take responsibility for their freedoms.

Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand, whether it is the responsibility to refrain from inciting people to violence while exercising your freedom of speech, or taking positive action to see that the guns owned by law abiding citizens do not fall into the hands of criminals and terrorists.

Many vocal gun owners refuse to acknowledge that with their freedoms come responsibility.  Instead they try to sweep this tragic result under the rug. They find scapegoats and rationalize that there will always be a few bad apples. They believe that putting common sense limits on who should possess guns and how guns should be safeguarded is an infringement.  They will do anything except stand and take responsibility.

They would rather that this and the tragic slaughter of tens of thousands of innocents each year be forgotten, buried with the dead. The pathological drive to evade responsibility has gone to new depths in the outright denial that the massacre of children even happened.

Fanning the flames of this malignant psychosis are the likes of conservatives such as Alex Jones whose armed fans have presented a clear and present danger to the parents whose children were so senselessly slaughtered at Sandy Hook. Indeed, two people have been arrested in separate incidences for threatening or harassing the Sandy Hook survivors.

Where will this end? Since when is the right to bear arms superior to our right to live? Whatever happened to the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness?

America is suckling a viper at her breast, one that is driven by delusion, fear and inhumanity. 

Fred W. Nehring

Boothbay