Reflections on the US's Latest Gun Tragedy

When the first news broke of the school massacre, my husband asked "Arabs?", meaning "is this an Islamic terrorist attack?"  THAT is completely understandable to him.  I replied that it most probably was an ex-school employee who'd been fired or some other borderline lunatic who'd snapped, and my husband's next question was "Why didn't the school guards stop him?"  to which I had to reply that schools in the US do not usually have guards at the gates as all of our schools do.

My own unworthy thought was, yes, it is really terrible, but what can one expect when guns are so readily available to the sane, the insane, and the mildly mentally deranged.?  Someone once estimated that if one-tenth of one percent of Americans were crazy enough to want to assassinate the President, that meant the Secret Service had to keep tabs on over 30,000 people.  I'm waiting for the NRA or the gun lobby to claim that the massacre could have been averted, not with stricter gun control, but if more citzens packed six-shooters and so could have "taken out the shooter" before he managed to kill so many.

And then I thought, to all those American parents in towns all over the US, who have children in unguarded classrooms, now you know how we feel every single day, since we don't have to fear the lone meshuggeneh but tens, if not hundreds, of thousands who plan to do this to our children [and us] all the time. [And there are rumblings, following the Hamas rally in Hebron yesterday, that another intifada might erupt soon]

But we have guards at the gates, everywhere.  And strict gun laws.  And no Palestinian school bus, or school, has ever been attacked by us.