Trying to Make Sense of the Absurd

I felt compelled today to send New York Times columnist Bob Herbert an email in response to his column, "Helplessness in the Face of Madness." www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/opinion/15herbert.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212 Here's what I wrote:

"Below is a letter to my local newspaper in response to your colleague Paul Krugman's Jan. 9 'Climate of Hate' column. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10krugman.html?scp=1&sq=Paul%20Krugman&st=Search

Guess it was too politically incorrect, as it was not published. But it certainly does highlight points in your column today, 'Helplessness in the Face of Madness.' Here's my letter:

'No, I wasn’t surprised by Saturday’s massacre in Arizona. (Violence is inevitable in this climate of hate. Jan. 11, 2011) Shocked, but not surprised. I won’t be surprised by the next one, either. Or the one after that. Or the one after that. That’s because they will continue to occur just as surely as nothing ever being done to prevent them will. Just look at this partial record of U.S. shooting sprees in the past decade:

8 dead, 2 wounded—Manchester CN, Aug. 3, 2010
14 dead, 4 wounded—Binghamton NY, April 3, 2009
8 dead—Carthage NC, March 29, 2009
10 dead—rural Alabama, March 10, 2009
5 dead, 18 wounded—DeKalb IL, Feb. 14, 2008
8 dead, 7 wounded—Omaha NE, Dec. 5, 2007
32 dead, 20 wounded—Virginia Tech VA, April 16, 2007
5 dead—Amish school PA, Oct. 2, 2006
9 dead, 7 wounded—Red Lake MN, March 21, 2005
7 dead, 4 wounded—Brookfield WI, March 12, 2005
7 dead—Honolulu HI, Nov. 2, 1999
12 dead—Atlanta GA, July 29, 1999
12 dead, 24 injured—Littleton CO, April 20, 1999
But maybe I’ve blown this all out of proportion. That’s only 137 dead people out of about 120,000—just over one-tenth of 1 percent—of gun-related homicides in the past 10 years. So in the grand scheme of things, Arizona’s death toll really isn’t much of a problem. Is it?'

"What astounds me, Mr. Herbert, is that the lives of 120,000 people murdered by guns in this country every year are worth so much less than the 2,973 killed on 9/11, on which our goverment--with the tacit, if not, overt approval of a huge number of Americans--has spent billions of dollars to avenge and passed laws that restrict our civil liberties far more than any gun-safety laws that would not ban guns, but would provide some sanity to how they are used."

That's the end of my email to Bob Herbert. What I didn't say to him is that I'm still trying to understand is the liberal attitude people who are called conservative have about the legal proliferation of firearms and accessories that are designed for the sole purpose of shooting as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time, and the generosity of people with that liberal attitude who condone and even promote allowing that kind of weaponry to be carried, both openly and under cover, any and everywhere in public settings populated by innocents, children and babies--those very members of society that Americans say are the most precious, that we hold most dear and deserve the greatest protection.

We shield their names and faces from public scrutiny in court and other official documents and even in news reports. But not from assassins', criminals' and indescriminant shooters' bullets.