More on Newtown

President Obama's visit to Newtown, Connecticut, last night must have been one of the saddest occasions of his life, made all the sadder because the American government failed to protect its most vulnerable citizens.  We know there are ways to protect ourselves from gun violence--we used to have an Assault Weapons Ban--but our leaders are chicken.

I sent an email to NC Senator Hagan last night urging her to take action on gun violence.  The drop-down menu on her website listed both "Second Amendment" and "Drug/Crime" as subjects I could select, but I clicked on "Terrorism" instead, for this most accurately describes these shootings.

Whenever they happen, we immediately hear news stories about how rare such incidents are.  But so was September 11, and our government sprang into action with new agencies, new commissions, new airport policies, and new warning systems.  Nothing comparable happens with gun shootings, even though the number of victims each month roughly equals the total number of those killed on September 11.  And not only does nothing happen, nobody even says anything, other than to offer big hugs to the survivors.

These hugs are becoming meaningless, I'm sorry to say, when we fail to DO ANYTHING to try to stop gun violence in the first place.  Solutions aren't easy, and some ideas will fail.  But worse than failure is silence--which has been deafening for too long.

President Obama spoke out last night, finally, and seems ready to take action.  To do so on his part is not to play politics with a tragedy, as some will charge.  Rather, it's what a responsible, civilized society does--take something that went terribly wrong and try to prevent it from ever happening again.