Connecticut School Shootings and the Media

The shooting yesterday in Newtown, CT was horrible.  It was bad enough to hear about the numbers of people killed but even worse to hear that the majority were kindergartners.  There is a special place in hell for people who commit these crimes! At least the coward did society the favor of saving money by taking himself out at the end.

I watched a decent amount of the coverage yesterday and thought that, for the most part, the media seemed to handle themselves properly but that seems to be changing today.

Today I was doing work around the house and has CNN on.  For the most part, the coverage was decent until they started harping on the whole gun control issue.  Soledad O'Brien started beating up on Congresswoman Mary Bono about it and then Don Lemmon started in on a minister from Colorado whose church had experienced a shooting in the past.  These two (2) reporters crossed the line and began interjecting their own personal feelings into the interviews.

Then when they mentioned what the NRA's response (which was no comment) as well as another gun owner's association (expressing sorrow and no further comment) were, they almost got to the point of rolling their eyes.

While I have an issue with the NRA's at times, uncompromising stance on most gun regulation, they were correct not to address the issue at this time.

I am a big believer in the 2nd amendment and believe that we need to ensure that guns remain available to sane, responsible law abiding citizens but need to have some controls to keep them away from others.  This is easier said than done but needs to be the goal.

Draconian, knee jerk reactions are NOT the answer.  What we need are common sense solutions. Norway, with very strict gun laws still had their own similar tragedy last year, so draconian laws won't stop these incidents.

Unfortunately illegal guns are out there and we can't put the genie back in the bottle.  A very true bumper sticker that I don't see anymore was, "If we outlaw guns only the outlaws will have guns."  We can't risk this!

Unfortunately what some of the draconian laws do, is prevent law abiding citizens from intervening when someone goes nuts.  If, for example, one of the parents who had been meeting with the principal when it all started had been legally carrying a gun, perhaps, they could have intervened.  Unfortunately, due to the draconian laws, that parent could have been prosecuted for carrying a weapon on school property.

Common sense and compromise is what we need before we can even think about solving these issues.