When do we save the Children?

A deranged young man Adam Lanza killed 20 children and 6 adults on December 14th, 2012.  He killed himself rather than facing justice.  He also killed his mother prior to heading to Sandy Hook Elementary School.

We look for someone to blame in these cases.  But since the gunman and his mother are dead, we look to the guns as the blame for these deaths, because there is no person to prosecute, no one at whom to point fingers.

In Detroit Semeria Greene stabbed her 8-year old daughter just before the new year and days before her daughter's birthday.  At least one of her other young children witnessed the killing.  Semeria Greene was arrested and charged.  We have someone to blame.  We are not blaming the knife or crying out for the banning of certain types of knives.  We have someone at whom to point fingers and cry out "Shame!" and "Murderer!"

Susan Smith put her two children in a car and sent that car into a lake in South Carolina, killing the children.  She is in jail, we had someone to blame.  No one suggests that cars kill people.  We can look at her and shake our heads and think "Murderer!"

On December 3rd in Detroit D'Andre Lane was sentenced in the 2011 murder of his 2-year old daughter Bianca Jones, allegedly because she wet her bed.  He was convicted of beating her, placing her body in an incinerator and inventing a car-jacking story to cover the crime. We have somone at whom to point fingers, to cry out "Murderer!"

I grieve for all these children.  I don't understand how a stranger or a parent could cause such violence to anyone, and especially against innocent  children.  Whatever the weapon, whatever the cause, the killing of children affects all of us who hear the reports.  We need a villian, we need to make someone responsible, and I believe we feel cheated when the perpetrator kills themself, as Adam Lanza did, and we have to find another avenue for our rage.

VP Biden is looking to craft some kind of weapons legislation, to avoid another Sandy Hook.  Guns are the villians here, since we can't put someone on trial.  Those groups and indiduals like the NRA are villified; an angry nation requires a pound of flesh to somehow make a horrible situation better.

I do not now nor have I ever owned a firearm. Not my style. My Step-Father Harold some twenty years ago sold his collection of rifles and handguns. He was an NRA member, and sent a letter to the NRA indicating that "people are no longer responsible enough" for him to risk having his weapons fall into the hands of someone bent on evil. I applauded him; this military sharp-shooter whose affinity for rifles came from his military training. He was not a hunter; he was trained to shoot people. He had a loaded handgun on his bookshelf headboard on his bed.  Harold never killed anyone.

It's a horrible tragedy when people die in an violent act. When children are involved, it tears at our hearts and makes us demand answers, demand changes.  But what about other violence against children?

Since the Sandy Hook tragedy on December 14th, a span of 27 days, 10 of which were Saturdays, Sundays or holidays, a conservative number of 68,000 (yes, 68,000) unborn children were killed by abortion in the United States.  Who do we point fingers at and cry out "Shame!"?  How many fundraisers are there for these innocents?

Womens' Groups cry out against the selective abortion of female children in China.  At least half of the US abortions are female children; where is the outcry? Who can I blame for these deaths?  What legislation can I cry out for from VP Biden, from my Congress?

Why is the killing of 20 children in Sandy Hook a national tragedy but the killing of some 4,000 other children that same day looked at as "a woman's choice of what to do with her own body?"  Why are D'Andre Lane, Semeria Greene and Susan Smith murderers, along with Adam Lanza if those 4,000 other children killed each day do not matter?

See, for many of us, all life is precious.  I grieve for the children and families of those killed at Sandy Hook, as I grieved for the children killed in the federal building in Oklahoma, as I grieved for Bianca Jones and Tameria Greene (Semeria's daughter) I also grieve for those victims of abortion, whose lives for some reason are less important than others.

Please understand, I'm not trying to downplay the horrific tragedy of the Sandy Hook murders.  I am a father of two (grown) children.  I try to put myself in the shoes of parents whose children die through accidents, illnesses or violence imagining if it was my kids, and I cry.  It would be hard to ever lead a normal life after such a loss, such a senseless unexplainable loss as in the case in Connecticut.  I pray for the families of all the victims, as I do for the family of Bianca Jones and Tameria Greene and  the scores of others.  And I thank God my family has been safe.

When we decide the deaths of some innocent children require new and stronger governmental regulations but in the same breath fight any regulation regarding the deaths of other unborn children, it smacks as hypocritical.  If the senseless killing of 20 children in Connecticut, 2 in Detroit and 2 more in South Carolina demand a pound of flesh, what about the 4,000 lives cut short daily in the name of "choice"? 

I suppose as my liberal friends would suggest that I just don't have the intelligence nor sophistication to undertand the obvious difference between the value of some children's lives versus others.  I hope I never do.