A time to grieve, not politicize

How many of us have offered a prayer for the victims and families of the Newtown, Conn. atrocity?

In the wake of this horror, how many of us have, instead, offered an opinion – either pro or con – on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?

How many on either side have taken up the usual political rhetoric prior to the first of many funerals for the Connecticut community?

Conservative pundits were all-too-quick to pounce on President Obama for his Sunday evening address in Newtown. He would seize the opportunity, they said, to further his supposed gun-control agenda.

From the Left, Baltimore Sun columnist and distinguished University of Maryland Carey School of Law professor Maxwell Stearns was also prepared to politicize the tragedy before the first burial of the first of many victims.

"It's not inappropriate to use the tragedy of Newtown to reflect on how our gun laws contribute to such horrors," Professor Stearns said Monday.

Can't both factions leave this argument for another day?

With all due respect, now is clearly not the time for the gun-control debate. Save it for another day. The debate, as we all know, will not be decided this week, this month or this year.

For the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School, this is a time to weep, a time to mourn, a time to heal. Show some respect.

* * *

In the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook murders, a number of media have reported that it was the worst school tragedy in our nation's history.

As horrible as the Connecticut crimes were, as former Hillsboro Fire Chief Jerry Powell informed me today, more lives were taken by a school employee in the 1927 Bath (Michigan) Consolidated School massacre that claimed 38 elementary school children, two teachers, and four other adults, while injuring at least 58 people.

These 1927 deaths – some 85 years ago – were the deadliest mass murders in a school in United States history.

The murderer, 55-year-old Bath school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe, was angry after being defeated in the 1926 election for township clerk.

Kehoe didn't use a semi-automatic weapon. Mostly, (after beating his wife to death) he killed with explosive devices. In fact, he didn't use a gun at all – except to detonate his final, fatal blast.

According to reports at Wikipedia and other sources, as rescuers gathered at the Michigan school, Kehoe drove up, stopped, and used a rifle to detonate dynamite inside his shrapnel-filled truck, killing himself, the school superintendent, and several others nearby, as well as injuring more bystanders.

In other words, if some raging maniac is hell-bent on hurting or killing his fellow man, he does not need a gun to aid and abet the act. There are myriad ways.

* * *

While the Left and Right have been quick to blame/defend guns in the Sandy Hook aftermath, how many have looked at more likely causes?

The actions of the Sandy Hook killer (don't bother looking for his name in this column) have generated plenty of Second Amendment discussion, but less discussion of signs of mental illness and mass media influences.

The pattern of these modern-day executioners seems too consistent to ignore. They are described as "intelligent loners" who played – and excelled – at video games. Some struggled with attention disorders. Some were described as "goths," fashioning themselves as members of some apocalyptic subculture.

Maybe those media – be they film producers, "music" makers, or video game pushers – ought to share somewhat in this general culpability. After all, many of them profit – far more than gun manufacturers – from their video violence vacuousness.

For 38 years, from 1930-68, the Motion Picture Production Code was a set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of most United States motion pictures released by major studios. It was popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor, W.H. Hays.

I'm in no mood for a moral debate or a censorship debate about the Hays Code; but I will say this: It was a much easier thing growing up in a world without today's attitude of anything goes.

My parents didn't worry about their children watching X-rated movies, slasher films, Texas chainsaw massacres or Lord only knows what on the Internet.

We lived in Fairfax. On a good day, our television reception brought in Cincinnati channels 5, 9 and 12. Once in a great while – if the atmospheric conditions were just right – we could watch Channel 19 on UHF.

Nobody played violent video games. In fact, nobody played video games because we didn't know what they were. Nobody looked up random acts of violence on the Internet.

Mostly, we worked. We read. We talked. Face to face. We did not text. We did not tweet. We did not post embarrassing items on Facebook. For real excitement, we played nickel/dime poker on Friday nights.

In the summer, we fished. In the fall and winter, we hunted. We respected our families, our friends and our neighbors. We helped one another.

And at no time did we ever have any outside media influences which might lead us into the temptation of becoming a crazed killer.

There used to be a time when the good guys always won. Good triumphed over evil. And we weren't ashamed, because that's how it ought to be. TV shows and movies had similar messages that doing the right thing would always prevail.

Today's parents have far more worries than gun control.

They'd be wise to look at their children's computer habits, video game habits and television habits.

Above all else, find time to talk to your children. Too many parents don't, and too many of us are left wondering what went so wrong in a young person's life as just happened in Newtown, Conn.

Enough.

Rory Ryan is publisher of The Highland County Press.