We Are Sacrificing Children On An Alter Of Guns

The United States has made a terrible choice -- that we are willing to sacrifice children to protect the right of criminals, the dangerously mentally ill, domestic abusers, and terrorists to have any kind of gun and ammunition they want. Republicans will tell you they are protecting the right of Americans to own a gun, but no one is trying to deny that right to honest and law-abiding citizens. The Republican intransigence only protects those who should not have a gun, and this just insures that more mass murders will happen (including those of children).

Alyssa Rosenberg discusses this sacrificial mentality in The Washington Post. Here is part of what she wrote:

On the surface, contemporary America seems very distant from the world of Greek tragedy or the Toltec capital of Tula in 950 A.D. But our societies have something in common. We all practice child sacrifice.

The latest young victims of the ritual slaughter our culture permits are the 19 children shot to death inside their school in Uvalde, Tex., on Tuesday.

The massacre brings the total number of children killed in school shootings since the 1999 Columbine attack to 185. That figure doesn’t account for all the other settings in which children have been the victims of mass gun violence. And it doesn’t include the 311,000 children who were injured in school shootings, witnessed their classmates and teachers being shot, or sought shelter in barricaded classrooms, bathrooms and closets.

Given the lack of action after these spasms of butchery, there is only one possible conclusion: We are willing to tolerate the murder of children. We accept events that will gravely wound the bodies and psyches of many others.