I was going to publish a post 2 days ago, but after returning home with my preschooler from his Christmas/holiday/everything party, I heard about Newtown, CT. And then I made the mistake of logging onto Facebook and reading posts from “friends” and their “friends” and so on that made anything I had been planning to publish seem alien. As my son ate his lunch, I ducked into the garage and silent-screamed and sobbed for 5 minutes. And then I pulled myself together and fused myself to my child’s side.

“good grief. gun control. do not take away my right to bear arms because somebody else breaks the law.”

“According to the FBI, more people are killed from baseball bats than anything else, including guns.  So, I say, LET’S OUTLAW BASEBALL.”

“Barbara Boxer should mandate boxing classes for all high-school kids. It would give them a non-lethal way to settle differences of opinion regarding who baddest.”

“If more kids had guns or if teachers had guns and self-defense classes then 1 shooter would have been taken care of.”

“Virginia Tech was bragging about how it was a gun-free zone prior to that shooting a few years ago that took out 33 people.  If 5% of the people on that campus had had guns,  a lot of lives would have been saved.”

And today other FB “friends” posted the (supposedly) Morgan Freeman piece, which is a nice piece, until the ending, which says don’t support gun control, but mental health reform. Alarums, alarums.

I offer this bit of information:

In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings — but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. The murder rate with firearms has dropped by more than 40 percent, according to data compiled by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and the suicide rate with firearms has dropped by more than half.
—Nicholas D. Kristof

You can read the article, Do We Have The Courage To Stop This, and about that law here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Then go to the blackboard. Write Kristof’s above quote 100 times. Write it 100 more.

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