Double Standards on Death

“No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society,” President Obama said at the memorial service for victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, “but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this. If there’s even one step we can take to save another child or another parent or another town from the grief that’s visited Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek and Newtown and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that, then surely we have an obligation to try.”

The president also quoted scripture but he overlooked a key reality. When it serves their interest, the federal government is willing to promote the illegal sale of weapons that wind up in the hands of violent criminals. Consider Operation Fast and Furious, for example.

President Obama and Felipe Calderon, then president of Mexico, believed that American guns cause violence in Mexico and that 90 percent of the guns used by Mexican drug cartels come from the United States. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Obama administration officials repeated this charge with the obedience of Susan Rice claiming that the deadly terrorist attacks on Americans in Libya were caused by a video. The apologists cited no study for the 90 percent claim, which shapes up as pure invention. The evidence suggests, however, the Obama administration took steps to make the charge real.

Andre Howard is owner of the Lone Wolf gun store in Glendale, Arizona. In 2009, agents of the federal bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms ordered Howard to sell weapons to every illegal purchaser, including Jaime Avila Jr. who purchased AK-47s. Howard had serious misgivings about the plan but AFT agents assured him

Once, persons who were obviously maladjusted to the world around them, were put into secure surroundings until either their source of malcontent was resolved, or there was a practical breakthrough that made it possible for them to contend with the external world once more. But in a social experiment that has gone on too long, these persons with less than a full measure of coping strategies at their disposal were mainstreamed back into the greater society, where their mischief could be permitted to fester, until it burst forth in full and furious flower, a blaze of unholy glory, and only ended badly.

Adam Lanza was a flawed human being, functioning at but a fraction of his potential. Lord knows, his mother believed herself to be the only available hope for him to gain some kind of mastery over the vicissitudes of life, a skill he so deperately needed. And for many years, she was at least partially successful, but in the end, it was not enough.

There are so many “should have, could have, would have” things, that, in hindsight, ought to have been done, or at least tried. Adam had only access to a few, and none of which were quite right for him.

People cannot always dodge the next bullet. And not all the bullets, by any means, are fired from sidearms. Adam was, in the end, as much a victim as those at whom he fired a gun, trapped in a psyche he could not escape.

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