Infanticide in the Classroom

What a terrible fate to befall the children of Sandy Hook School in Connecticut. Where society’s youngest are being made ready for the life that awaits them the act of depriving them of life itself is mercilessly inflicted. While what happened at Columbine High in 1999 should never be depreciated, Sandy Hook seems so much worse. The victims tended to be younger and more helpless. Here in Europe it has parallels with the Dunblane Primary School massacre in Scotland in 1996.

On the evening of the Sandy Hook slaughter I cradled my seven year old son. He knew about the deaths at the school and is aware that the dead are US citizens as is he. I told him how much he and his sister were loved and how children matter more than anything else in life. He agreed but then asked for his bedtime story, which he got.

To feel the life that coursed through his veins as I read to him snuggled into me sent a surge of satisfaction racing through my own. His life so vibrant, not having been drained away in a matter of mere seconds as he cowered in incomprehensible terror cornered in the back of a classroom: the victim of a maniac who had such easy access to the means of destruction.

This gun culture that seems so pervasive in the United States and defended on principles of freedom from despotic government does nothing to protect citizens from government. Because of it government fails woefully to protect children and their teachers from gun crazed monsters.

The infanticide and its associated mass murder of teachers at Sandy Hook was nothing short of hate filled barbarism. A person that sets out cold bloodedly and ruthlessly to massacre such innocents is determined to hurt many more than the children he kills. By the revulsion and outrage that is always sure to be ignited it can be inferred that those who turn schools into killing zones seek to inflict their hatred on the widest range of people possible.

This was not some rush of blood to the head, a snapped mind that lashed out at those in his immediate vicinity. Sandy Hook was planned infanticide, ruthless slaughter reasoned out and remorselessly executed.

I have heard the name of the ‘shooter’ but refused to let it stay in my mind. After the massacre of Colorado movie goers in July the families of the slain refused to name the person responsible. That seems fitting. Remember those who died and revile forever as a nameless monster the perpetrator. Like the lives of those obliterated the thing should not be honoured with any human name.

So far removed from Sandy Hook there is little we can do other than sympathise with the families of the child victims and their murdered teachers. My wife diverted some money from the Christmas budget sending it instead to Newton Youth and Family Services which is flat out counselling those affected by this most unnatural disaster.

In the mouth of Christmas as we think of the slain children, the teachers, families, their colleagues and schoolmates, we are confronted with a terrible sobering realisation – it will all happen again. The easy access to guns coupled with the infernal minds of those who insist on owning the means of obliterating children guarantees that.

Deny all that's evil