Newtown Shooting

Friday morning, America was stunned as news of a school shooting in the small and picturesque town, Newtown in Connecticut emerged. It was not clear initially how many shooters, how many casualties and whether any kids had been injured.

As the day passed and details emerged, the enormity of the incident became clearer. 20 children between 6 and 7, and 6 adults, staff at the school had been killed. It later turned out that the shooter first shot his mother before heading to the school to carry out the carnage. And finally shot himself when early responders began to close in on him. Making it a total of 28 deaths.

The world has been shocked beyond belief. What made this a universal outrage was the age of the victims. Most of these were young, innocent children. What was equally shocking was the age of the shooter. He himself was a kid and just 20 years. And from the little that is known was a very intelligent person. It seems like he did have some social issues in adjusting and never interacted with classmates. For the last few years he had been taken out of a regular school and was being home schooled.

The immediate reaction of the US nation was one of outrage and anger. And an urgency that something needed to be done, since incidents of random killing in public places was becoming a regular affair. This was the 3rd major incident in 2012. President Obama who visited Newtown responded swiftly and created a group headed by Vice President Joe Biden to come up with recommendations for legislation that would look at the issue of gun licensing before the end of January.

Expectedly the NRA (National Rifle Association) has reacted negatively and has promised to do all it can to not allow any such legislation. Their solution, more guns. Have armed guards at schools as also arm principals and teachers.

At the end of the debate, I remain confused. Whilst there's absolutely no reason that automatic guns should not be banned for civilians, I'm not sure that this in itself as the proponents of the move propose reduce, let alone eliminate random acts of violence.

I'm also of the opinion that having arms in schools will act as a deterrent. Historically, as well as logically these random acts of violence happen in non secure easy targets, such as schools. Once they are stop being easy targets, the probability of violence is likely to significantly reduce.

The only conclusion I come to is that there are no easy answers. And we can but pray and hope that incidents of this nature don't happen. Ever again.