Twenty children and six adults were shot and killed in an elementary school on Friday, with another dead in her home. One man entered that school in Newton, Connecticut and pulled the trigger. But he is not the only one with blood on his hands. Every gun manufacturer, every lobbyist pushing to relax gun laws and every politician that takes their money, every media organization glorifying killers and the havoc they wreak, and every gun owner who refuses to admit that there is a gun problem in this country shares in the responsibility for what happened.
Sadly, massacres like this are so common that there is a standard response when they occur. The instant media blitz is always accompanied by a debate over whether such an event could have been prevented. The country mourns with the families of the victims. Prayers are said. Speeches are made. Bodies are buried. But, ultimately, nothing is done. People move on. And then, inevitably, the cycle begins again when there is another slaughter by another man with a gun.
Not this time. The cycle cannot continue. There must be a response. Something must change.
