A culture of madness.

"We challenge the culture of violence when we ourselves act in the certainty that violence is no longer acceptable, that it's tired and outdated no matter how many cling to it in the stubborn belief that it still works and that it's still valid." ~Gerard Vanderhaar~
What on earth would possess someone to shoot a six year old eleven times??!!

We always think that the human soul can't get any darker, but, sadly, somehow it always does. We thought Columbine was as bad as it could get, but here in America alone there has been 31 deadly  school shootings since Columbine, and we are all left wondering when the madness will end.

Maybe this tragedy in Connecticut will be a tipping point in this ongoing debate about where we should stand with guns in our culture. There is no doubt that we live in a violent society. Guns (and the glorification of them) are everywhere. They are in our games, our movies, and in our art. We embrace guns and we celebrate the fact that it is in our Constitution. Now, astonishingly, pro gun advocates are saying that if the kindergarten teachers were armed this tragedy would not have happened. (Yeah, that's the ticket, arm kindergarten teachers in every school in America.)

Now we are learning that the animal who slaughtered these children in Connecticut was raised by a mother who embraced the gun culture.

"Nancy Lanza took her son, Adam, to a shooting range and taught him how to use a firearm before he turned a gun on her and shot her dead, then executed more than two dozen terrified children and teachers at an elementary school.

Fifty-two-year-old Nancy Lanza was an avid gun collector who had legally purchased five firearms, all registered in Connecticut, according to police records.
'She said she would often go target shooting with her kids,' Dan Holmes, owner of the landscaping firm Holmes Fine Gardens, told Reuters.

He recalled that she once showed him a 'high-end rifle' that she had purchased.
'She was very proud of it,' he told the New York Daily News. 'She loved her guns.'"

Unfortunately, so did her son.