Guns--Time To Do Some Serious Thinking

"If people want to go hunting, a single-shot rifle does the job, and that does the job to protect your home, too. If you need more than that, I don't know what to say. I don;'t want to see my kids go to schools that become maximum-security fortresses. That's not the world I want to live in, and that's not the world I want to raise them in."
  --Parent speaking outside the service after Noah DiStephan's funeral in Newtown yesterday.


Most of us have been appalled by the shootings of those 20 children in their school and the six teachers or administrators. There is an outcry that we do something about guns.

A friend of mine wrote just yesterday: "I know we need to do something to control all these guns--but it ain't gonna happen." After all the funerals and the tears have dried, parents will still have to comfort scared children in Newtown--some for years and years. And this Christmas there will be unopened presents under many Christmas trees because of what happened in Newtown. One of the fairest and most sensible article I have read was the piece by Nicholas D. Kristof that appeared in last Sunday's New York Times. I do hope and pray that this terrible incident--which follows a multitude of others--will be dealt with responsibly for a change.

Sometimes politicians and the rest of us must put our personal opinions aside and do something for the human family. Norman Rockwell's portrayal of the Fourth Freedom: the freedom from fear captures this vision beautifully. Now that would be a great Christmas present for us all.