Stop the Evil!

"We will be told the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true.  No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can't be an excuse for inaction.  Surely we can do better than this." - Barack Obama, December 16, 2012

Can we stop the evil?  The loudest solution offered by the loudest voices in our society, the President and the Press, tell Americans (and the world) gun control is the only possible solution.  Many people who would never look at gun control before now look at the faces of those 20 unprotected little angels from Newtown and wonder if maybe, just maybe gun control really might feel better.  Like they are doing something.

A few days before the Newtown slaughter, a similarly deranged person went to a mall in Oregon and began shooting.   That criminals' gun jammed after he killed two people.  In that moment, a citizen hero with a concealed carry permit did something.  He pulled his self defense weapon.  The hero had an opportunity to stop the madman.  But when the hero saw something move near the murderer, he held his fire.  The madman fixed his gun and looked up to see the citizen hero ready to stop his evil.  The madman turned and ran, to a stairwell where he took his own life.

The countries of Israel and Thailand have faced evil.  Many of their school children were killed by evil of a  complex nature that they could not eliminate.  Those countries reacted proactively, by arming the people entrusted with the care of the innocent children.

They knew the nature of the evil they faced, and it would not stop.  They knew, from their own experience, banning guns could not stop it.

Other countries, nearer to our own, will say gun control was enough to stop the evils they faced.  Great Britain will tell you they haven't had a repeat of Dublane since they tightened gun control. 

But are we that confident, that our current evil, which appears to be the mental health of our own young men, will submit to gun control?

The country of Norway recently came face to face with an unexpected evil in their midst.  They already regulated gun ownership.  Would banning gun ownership stop a budding evil in its tracks?  Or was the horror unleashed at the Utoya summer camp a one time attack on Norway's children?

One thing we know of evil, with unerring certainty, is that banning guns will eventually give evil more power.  Turkey, Germany, China, Cambodia and far to many more countries have witnessed evil without restraint.  Several years after Dublane, Great Britain may be learning what Israel and others have already learned.

Evil, unchecked by freedom, is even worse than we can imagine on this day.

The solution to the violence of genocide, and the massacre at the elementary school that President Obama seeks, was found by a hero in Oregon, and articulated by an Irish Catholic friend of America from our early years searching for life, liberty and happiness.   Edmund Burke wrote

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

When good men are banned from stopping evil, nothing will.