Neighbors

            The gun control battle has now come to my neighborhood. On one side is a liberal screaming for our legislators to DO SOMETHING! On the other is a gun-carrying conservative who says the government will NEVER TAKE AWAY MY GUNS!

            To the liberal, the haunting nightmare of Newtown demands that legislatures protect our loved ones by passing strict gun control laws, as if such laws could have prevented Adam Lanza from spraying a classroom with bullets. There was no suggestion in her letter to me that lawmakers should reconsider legislation that put mentally ill killers like Lanza back on the streets instead of keeping them in mental institutions where they cannot harm us.
            To the conservative, the best solution would be to arm everyone, including classroom teachers. He is fond of telling the story about two punks who walked into a New Jersey bar one day, pulled out guns, and announced "This is a stickup." The next thing they heard was a series of metallic clicks coming from the bar occupants. What the punks didn't realize is that they had walked into a bar that just happened to be a hangout for off-duty officers. The holdup did not go so well. So, If crime control works with armed officers, it should work even better with an armed citizenry.
            I cannot fault either of my neighbors for their strongly held positions, although I do not entirely agree with them. I just happen to have a different take on the subject. As horrible as Newtown was, it cannot compare with the slaughter that takes far more innocent lives in our inner cities, with Chicago, Obama's hometown, being the worst. I don't need to repeat the awful statistics here. I would like to make the case, however, as many others have done, for the root cause of gun violence. To me, it comes down to the degradation of our culture.
            It all begins with a wide range of corrupting influences: the devaluing of life where "choice" is more important than the protection of the innocent; the dismissal of marriage and fatherhood as core transmitters of traditional values; the moral relativism of an increasingly secular society; the greed of Wall Street moneychangers; the perpetrators of graphic violence in the entertainment industry; the hypocrisy of our nation's leaders whose principles "evolve" to please the masses.
            Far beyond legislative band-aids and constitutional arguments, all of us who care about the legacy we leave our children should demand more of our leaders and ourselves. We should speak up in every way against the corruption, the venality,  the greed, and the merchants of violence.
            After all, those were all our children in Newtown.