newtown shooting
Hey, America's still talking about gun control!
Here's some good news: despite our short collective attention span, despite the fiscal-cliff debacle dominating the headlines shortly after the Newtown shooting, the U.S. scourge of gun violence is still part of the national conversation.
Now, every time I hear a public official mention Newtown and Aurora but not Chicago—which experienced a startling spike in gun homicides in 2012, mostly in poor, black neighborhoods—I'm ashamed at the implication that some killings deserve more shock and outrage than others. Still, whatever it takes to motivate people to take on the pro-gun lobby, I'm grateful to see it happening.
Guns as the price for freedom?
President Obama’s speech in Newtown on December 17 included this pivotal question: “Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” The president is bristling here at the way our political discourse reflexively leaps to claims about individual rights and freedoms.
Blue hearts
On Sunday I attended a worship service at which the air was heavy with a sense of loss. But I saw the church being the church at its best.
Stopping gun violence
In the wake of the Newtown shooting, political will is growing to do something about guns. People are moved to act—and we must act.
No, the problem at Sandy Hook wasn't the lack of men
Megan McArdle thinks that gun-control measures wouldn't accomplish much but that training kids to run at a shooter instead of away might. That's a weird payoff at the end of a 4,500-word post, but it's not as offensive as Charlotte Allen's argument.