We must end America’s gun plague: Sandy Hook should have changed things

Ten years ago in a quiet Connecticut town, a psychotic young man wielding a military-grade weapon walked into an elementary school and murdered 20 first graders and six educators. Those 20 children, 6 and 7 when they were riddled with bullets, would be high school juniors if they were alive today.

The intervening decade has seen some victories in the slow and grinding battle to unravel America’s gun-worshiping death cult. But the awakening has been far too slow, too painful. Take your pick of depressing count: Since Sandy Hook, there have been 189 fatal shootings at American schools; nearly 500 people killed in mass shootings with four or more victims of all kinds across the country; and 400,000 gun deaths.

Yes, New York and other states passed strict gun laws in the massacre’s wake. The families of Newtown’s victims sued and settled for many millions with the gunmaker Remington for its irresponsible marketing of its AR-15-style weapons. The corrupt and bankrupt National Rifle Association has lost much of its clout. The cretin who broadcast virulent lies about the massacre has just been ordered to pay dearly for his defamation. And five months ago, the biggest bipartisan gun safety advance in decades became law.

But for all these steps forward, there’s been pernicious slippage. A reactionary Supreme Court has further enshrined a near-absolutist right to carry firearms, making a mockery of the Second Amendment. A federal ban on assault rifles remains a dream, as do other overwhelmingly popular measures.

Meanwhile, the public has grown inured to the steady and hollow drumbeat of murder as though it is every bit as American as the snare they hear beneath the fife on the Fourth of July.

Allison, Ana, Avielle, Benjamin, Caroline, Catherine, Charlotte, Chase, Daniel, Dylan, Emilie, Grace, Jack, James, Jesse, Jessica, Josephine, Madeleine, Noah, Olivia. When the roll is called, voices declare “not here.” Neither are their teachers: Anne Marie, Dawn, Lauren, Mary, Rachel and Victoria. But ever present in their absence is hope against hope that our violent nation can do the hard work to find some semblance of peace.