Call it evil, call it insanity, call it whatever you will — yesterday’s slaughter of the innocents in Connecticut was an act of such unfathomable horror that it defies both explanation and understanding.
There are no adequate answers, there is no meaningful comfort to be given — and there are no reasonable preventive measures to be taken.
A lunatic gunman made his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and opened fire.
In the blink of an eye, 26 innocent people, 20 of them small children, lay dead — as did the shooter, who took his own life.
Thus did the soul-scouring search for answers begin.
It will not soon end.
Twenty innocent children — all between the ages of 5 and 10.
Six adults were mercilessly gunned down, as well.
And at least one other victim, possibly the mother of the gunman, identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, appears to have been killed at another location.
A search for “underlying” answers, of course, is well under way.
And, to no one’s surprise, much blame is falling on the means used to carry out yesterday’s evil: guns.
The atrocity quickly ignited yet another deeply passionate debate, reflecting the nation’s complex relationship with firearms.
Much of the country, indisputably, holds dear the right to bear arms — clearly enunciated in the Constitution’s Second Amendment and upheld by the US Supreme Court as recently as last year.
Moreover, efforts by gun-control advocates over the years have demonstrated — if nothing else — how strongly attached to its guns America really is.
Still, given the mass shootings of recent years — from Columbine to Virginia Tech to Aurora to the Oregon mall nightmare just last Tuesday — it’s hard not to wonder whether the nation’s patience with powerful firearms isn’t wearing thin.
How weapons capable of extinguishing 26 lives in a matter of minutes routinely end up in the hands of madmen is something even the gun lobby will need to reckon with — if for no other reason than its own self-interest.
We fully understand the issues.
We know that there are hundreds of millions of privately held firearms in America — and that for the most part they are beyond “control.”
We know that guns don’t kill, people do.
But we also know that it is extremely difficult to justify the presence of high-volume-of-fire, military-style weaponry in modern society.
Yes, those who would disarm America must contend with the Constitution.
But now those who defend the Second Amendment have to do so in the context of the Sandy Hook slaughter.
As a matter of conscience, it’s going to be a very tough case to make.