Well, I guess I am going to talk about the Connecticut massacre after all.

Normally, I don’t talk about these things right away. I prefer to address them when the pain, horror, and fear have died down a little, and I can sort through all my thoughts and emotions and draw some sort of conclusions and all that.

But today is different. I don’t think time will change anything.

So here’s the story : at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut, a killer opened fire and killed 27 people, mostly children.

There’s more, but does it matter, really?

No, it doesn’t.

People will be asking themselves : why?

The answer : crazy person.

There is absolutely no other meaningful answer to the question. Why did it happen? Because crazy person.

If you want to talk about guns, then you can ask why the death toll was so high. Then you can legitimately blame the guns. Especially automatic and semi-automatic weapons. They make killing a lot of people really fast, and killing them DEAD, really easy.

And while it is true to say that it is impossible to keep a determined person from getting their hands on an automatic weapon, it is also true that it is impossible to keep a determined person from murdering people in the first place, yet we keel murder illegal.

The idea would be to keep mentally unstable people from getting automatic weapons. But the thing is, even if we could scan people for craziness right there at the gun counter, there is no reason to think a sane person could not buy a gun, then decades later lose their grip and go on a rampage.

We would have to be able to predict future insanity, which is clearly impossible.

I could point out that my country. Canada, has practically no history of school shootings, and also does not have the NRA, automatic weapons, or handguns.

But that does not mean much, either. Gun culture is uniquely American. No other country thinks about guns like an American does. The whole paranoid fantasy of home protection that is the thin edge of the wedge that the gun industry uses to pry open some of the worst parts of the human psyche (much like SUV advertisers convince you that you will use their vehicles to take your family on picnics up mountains when what they are really selling is BIG THING MAKE FEEL POWER BIG DICK) is one hundred percent American.

The problem is not the availability of the guns, although possibly some finagling with the current gun laws could cut down on the body count, at least.

The problem is wanting the guns. And not just wanting them, but wanting them so bad that you will willfully and vociferously fight any idea that any restriction to your right to absolutely any weapon in the world is anything less than Hitler cutting off your dick with a rusty razor blade.

Guns give you great power. That is what makes them so attractive.

And with great power, comes great responsibility. That’s not just a catchy Spider-man quote. It is exactly how justice works.

And so forth, and so on. I won’t get into it. The spoiled children are no doubt venting their pathetically
obvious castration anxiety all over the Internet enough as it is.

And you know what? They have a point, in there with all the infantile flailing and squalling.

Taking their precious phallic extensions away would not keep this sort of thing from happening.

More mental health beds would not keep this from happening either. Whoever did this horrible act did not think they were crazy, and unless we are willing to also really step up committing people against their will if they show the slightest sign of mental instability (and we’re not), there is absolutely nothing we can do to keep a person with no previous history of violence from grabbing whatever weapons they can and committing an atrocity like this.

In fact, that is the answer to the big question everyone is asking today : what can we do to prevent things like this from happening in the future?

The answer : absolutely nothing.

We don’t like this answer, but it remains true nevertheless. No doubt, solutions will be proposed, legislation will be passed, people will forget all about it until it happens again.

But all that is in service to the god of Doing Something. It has little to do with actual effective prevention of future incidents.

Because there is, quite honestly, nothing we can do.

Nothing direct, anyhow. Nothing certain or even likely. The factors that go into something like this are so numerous and nebulous that the things we could do to maybe have some sort of effect would be little more than shamanic stick shaking and the muttering of rosaries.

Maybe it would help if America could relax a little. These violent ages always happen at times of societal tension when the background anger level grows higher and higher in a frustrated population whose faith in society and its leaders has grown dangerously low.

But what is the solution to that? You can’t give a nation a chill pill. America is a very passionate nation and we live in an era of widespread belief (justified, IMHO) in big league corruption at the top causing massive unjust suffering for everyone else.

So maybe political reform would help some. But who knows when that will happen? Nobody can tell how many outbreaks of social chaos it will take before the powers that be decide that they had better at least appear to change the system or the angry masses will tear the whole thing down.

And when the tower falls, so to the people on top.

Or maybe the only real solution is to wait out the death throes of this era’s conservatives. I am not saying the shooter was a conservative, of course. I am, however, saying that a great deal of the heat of society’s discourse comes from these dying stars of conservatism in the media.

They are the angry ones railing against the walls of their crib. They are, in a sense, the angry rebels of our era. They shout and scream and foam at the mouth and refuse all responsibility.

A lot like the hippies of the 70’s who robbed banks and blew up recruiting offices, really.

Give it time, they too shall pass.