Senseless Killing Using Guns

Here is what I wrote today on Facebook after this tragedy (and I saw many other such comments):

I can't help myself from commenting on this latest in a long line of gun violence incidents that plague our country. We need better gun control laws. We need to make a it a lot harder to purchase handguns, which have no purpose other than to maim and kill others at short range. I hope the deaths of perhaps 20 children and 7 adults in Connecticut serves as the tipping point to take on the gun nuts in this country and the group that leads them, the NRA, and make it really hard to get these weapons of individual destruction out of our society.

And what does it say about our national culture that these incidents happen so frequently? We are a country where a frustrated individual can actually contemplate shooting other people because of his or her frustration. Why oh why is that even a viable alternative to people? We are suffering from a disease here, and that disease is taking lives every day. And for the most part, we are ignoring that disease.

We cannot change our culture quickly. But we can make it a whole lot more difficult for the crazy people who entered a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin or a mall in Oregon or, for God's sake, an elementary school in Connecticut and started randomly shooting people to get the weapons that allow them to wreak their havoc. I really do hope this is the tipping point.