The Death of Twenty Children in Newtown, Connecticut

Yesterday, Friday December 14, 2012, 20 six and seven year old children and six adults were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.  Last night, merely one day after the murders, several acquaintances defended the right for Americans to continue carrying hand guns.  What on earth will it take for Americans to finally and forever band the possession and sell of hand guns, automatic weapons and extended clip magazines?  Those in Newtown must feel like someone has stolen the very essence of their being.  It is the most severe pain a human can endure.  Yet there is no reason or logic for the killings.  I have two grand children, a five year old and a three year old, one in kindergarten and one in pre-school.  They live near Richmond Virginia.   The senseless shooting in Connecticut could just as well been in Richmond or Wichita, Kansas or Sacramento, California.  It was just random probability that they were in Newtown.  And, as horrible as it is to say, I am so grateful that the random toss of the dice didn’t land on my grandchildren.  But what I fear most is that one day, it could.

Hand guns, automatic weapons and extended clips serve only one purpose, they’re used for shooting people.  Some say they’re used for hurting.  Bull!  Rifles and shotguns are used for hunting, but, hand guns and M-16s are not used for shooting game.  Some say they like shooting at targets.  Yes… so they can better and more accurately shoot people.  Some say that having a hand gun will help keep them safe if someone threatens them with harm.  Bull again!  A hand gun is ineffective to self defense.  If someone really threatens you to the extent that a gun is required to defend yourself, a shot gun is a much more useful weapon.  You don’t need to be very accurate with a shotgun and, even better, the barrel end of a shotgun is very intimidating and may even eliminate the threat of harm all together.  Other folks say that “if everyone carried a side arm there would be less crime”.  Bull! Bull! Bull!  I challenge you to name one crime that was stopped because someone carried a hand gun.  Americas have among the highest number of weapons of any country in the world.  Yet, the number of violent crimes in America isn’t down.  It is the highest in the world.  Wake up America!  Hand guns, automatic weapons and extended clips do not prevent violent crime, they cause it!  The second amendment of the Constitution of the United State guarantees the right for citizens to bare arms but it does not guarantee the right to bear any and every type of arm every invented.  It doesn’t guarantee the right for Americans to own howitzers or tanks or .50 caliper machine guns.  Ignoring the fact that this amendment was initiated while our country was at war with a tyrannical nation and the right to bare arms was really referring to defending ourselves against such a nation, our constitution does not guarantee the right to carry hand guns and automatic weapons.  If such weapons were illegal in America, most likely Adam Lanza, the shooter, would not have been able to carry out such an horrendous act.  It’s only through the vain and selfish obsession of the National Rifle Association, that such weapons are still allowed in the United States.  These people seem to put they own measly desires ahead of the lives of hundreds of people killed by gun fire including those twenty sweet little kids in Newtown.  Now is the time to band together and force a strong, determined and sustained effort to outlaw hand guns, automatic weapons and extended magazines for rifles.  Those in Newtown, Connecticut should take the lead.  A forceful determined effort by 20, or 40 or 100 or one million totally dedicated families can produce revolutionary results.

Introduction

9-11 changed my life.  I remember I was at work preparing for a meeting when I heard the news.  At first I thought it was an accident until the second plane hit the tower.  What on earth has happened!  I was totally distraught; how could anyone hate Americans so much that they would kill 3000 people?  Over the following months and years I began to gather information, to learn why Al Qaeda hates us.  I read many books.  One book written by Sayyid Qutb with a title that translates into English as “Milestones” or “Sign Posts in the Road” was particularly relevant.  Qutb was an Egyptian who was educated in the U. S.  He was a Moslem fundamentalist and was appalled at the decadence and licentious of American culture.  His book extracted excerpts from the Quran to prove that America is evil and that all good Moslems should fight against American culture at every turn.  Osama bin Laden was a disciple of Qutb.  I also read “Approaching the Quran” by Michael Sells which translated many of the suras (verses) into English and then explains their meaning.  The Quran is written in poetic verse and the meanings of the suras are not always obvious.  I learned that, just like the Bible, the Quran was basically a moral book that preached moral ideas.  Also, like the Bible, the Quran has passages that, if taken out of context and misinterpreted by religion fanatics, could be used to incite extreme violence and ultra-intolerance.  I learned that there are really many similarities between the Bible and the Quran; a belief in only one God, a kindness toward your neighbor, the celebration of holy days like Ramadan and Christmas.  Some Moslems extend the belief in one God to extremes such that they will follow the lessons only of God and not any other authority such as a regional or national government or ruler.  Hence, some Moslem governments are intertwined with the Moslem faith and the practice of Moslem law called the Sharia.  Obviously bin Laden believed in this “only one God” principle and was appalled at the United States intrusion into the Moslem holy land of Arabia.

When President Bush announced that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were preparing weapons of mass destruction and that Hussein had contacts with bin Laden, I knew this could not be true.  Religious fanatics do not violate their most sacred law and cooperate with a ruthless dictator.  The Bush administration was perpetrating a fraud on the American public.  There was never a “clear and present danger” to America from Saddam Hussein and Bush and his cronies knew it.  About 3000 Americans were killed in Iraq for no purpose what-so-ever and many books such as “State of Denial” by Bob Woodward confirm that Bush was predisposed to attach Hussein regardless of the facts.  After the invasion, Bush declared “Mission Accomplished”.  Then the special envoy to Iraq, J. Paul Bremer, dissolved the Baath party, effectively eliminating the Iraqi government, and dissolved the Iraqi military.  Benner had just created one million enemies, most of the people in government and all the military people, most of them armed.  It was the dumbest move I could imagine and extended the war for years and added significantly to the death total.

Then came the Financial Crisis at the end of the Bush Administration.  Again, I was astounded.  How would such as strong prosperous nation fall from the height of success and prosperity into the perdition of bankruptcy, foreclosures and massive deficits in only a few months?  Again I took to educating myself.  Much of the information was available on the internet (information is easily available these days although not all of it is true) such as Wikipedia, on National Public Radio and in written articles such as an article in the Rolling Stone Magazine by Matt Taibbi entitled “The Great American Bubble Machine” that describes how Goldman Sachs has been swindling America for decades. 

By this time I was getting sick and tired of lies and half truths, of statements by members of political parties without any proof of their veracity.  Statements such as “Enactment of Obamacare will lead to death panels that dole out healthcare”, to me, were patently absurd.  Any people who believed this, Sarah Palin apparently, has no faith in the American system of democracy and justice. Yet many Americans believed it! 

Well, I’m feed up!  As an engineer and scientist, I try to make my decisions based on facts.  So I’ve decided,  I’m going to investigate various political issues, starting with “healthcare” and “the financial crisis”, to find out the facts and to explain to those people willing to listen (or read) what the situation really is.  I’m not a political scientist, sociologist or politician but I have learned through the years to take complex ideas and break them down into simplified terms that can be understood by non-experts; this is what I intend to do, breakdown the “Political Topics Today” into easily understood articles.  I plan that these articles will be sprinkled with humorous and entertaining interludes as we progress though a topic as well as being informative.  Most of these topics may require some explaining, they are too big to present in one blog.  Therefore they will be broken up into many blogs presented weekly at the http://www.politicaltopicstoday.blogspot.com/ web site.  Next week, the first week, we will start on the topic of Heathcare in America, a timely subject.

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