(continued)
Credit the Hanson town fathers - and mothers - for recognizing a truly awful
event. Two years ago, they tried to ban the shooting entirely, but lost in a
Town Meeting vote after gun club members recited their scripted rant about
losing their God-given right to bear arms.
Actually, officials were just trying to stop the show, and for good reason.
Here's what guns do: They kill. They might be shrewd investments, as Davis
points out. They might have significant historical value. They might be
beautiful to look at, thrilling for some people to hold, but the bottom line,
their intended purpose, the reason they were built, is to kill.
And kill they do. The teenage murderers at Columbine High School in
Littleton, Colo., had in their cache of weaponry a 9mm semi-automatic
carbine when they slayed 12 fellow students and a teacher in 1999. That
same type of lightweight semi-automatic rifle was also used in the Jonesboro
schoolyard massacre the year before. Five people died there.
Michael McDermott is charged with having an AK-47, a semi-automatic
rifle, when he allegedly went on his post-Christmas killing spree in Wakefield
last year that left seven dead.
It's nothing new, but worth repeating, to say that kids are bombarded with
violence. They see people shot to death every hour of every night on
network television. They play video games that are entirely geared toward
death. They see kids their age killing kids their age all across America, such
that school shootings aren't always front-page news anymore.
And now comes this gun group to glorify it all even more, to strip away the
distance, to put the weapons right in people's hands and tell children that
firing a machine gun is not only normal and healthy, but according to the
Patriot Ledger, ''fun.''
What might the men and women of the Hanson Rod and Gun Club say if the
next school shooting - and unfortunately, there's always a next school
shooting - is somewhere nearby?
Brian McGrory's e-mail address is
[email protected] This story ran on page 1 of the Boston Globe on 5/22/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.