The tragedy of Sandy Hook has affected me like no other. I can't wrap my head around it. The first two days after it happened, I couldn't watch the details on the news or look at the pictures of the victims without feeling sick to my stomach. On Sunday, I finally brought myself to read the details and look at the pictures of the twenty children and the six adults who died with them and it still made me feel sick. The funerals are beginning now and seeing those little coffins and grieving parents brings me to tears. When I see pictures of their little smiling faces, I can't help but see my grandchilden's faces...and can not imagine a world without them.
What kind of monster guns down his own mother and then goes on to slaughter 20 six and seven year-olds in their classrooms? Children are supposed to be safe in school. My daughter drops her kids off at school every morning and goes about her business without worry. Imagine the horror of learning your child was gunned down in kindergarten. What of the children who survived seeing their friends and classmates murdered before their eyes? Terrifying can't begin to describe it.
What kind of society are we, when there are people more concerned with their "right" to own guns than they are with the loss of these children? The response of decent people is horror and a desire to prevent something like this from happening again, which naturally draws gun control into the conversation. This is when the gun nuts come out of the woodwork. There have even been suggestions that we need more guns and that teachers should be armed! Where is reasoned thought and compassion?
This is not the first mass shooting; there have been others...Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, CO, Oregon mall, Gabrielle Giffords...all in recent memory. Somehow this one feels even worse. This one feels personal. Two mothers wrote a piece examining why, entitled What Six Looks Like. It really hit home. I too, know what six looks like...it looks like my precious grandchildren and that makes it personal.
