Here we go again.

"The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.”  ~Thomas Jefferson~

The "people of a nation", of course, includes its children.

I am sure that the parents of those twenty children who lost their lives in that bucolic community in Connecticut today thought that their children were safe. They were not. The truth of the matter is that you are not safe anywhere in America, anymore. There are a lot of urban high schools with metal detectors. Statistics show us that those children are certainly not safe. Rural elementary schools in upper middle class neighborhoods do not have metal detectors. And before today that was not even subject to debate. Now, after these horrific events, we find ourselves soul searching again.

This is not a gun control post. Regular readers on this blog know how I feel about the NRA, the pimps who run it, and the prostitutes' politicians who take their money. To be fair, there are some reasonable voices on the other side of this debate, and I have to hope that at some point we can find some common ground on this issue. 

I saw the president crying today while he was addressing the country about this latest tragedy. Maybe he was thinking about his children. Maybe he was thinking of all the children who were slaughtered on the streets of his hometown this past summer. And, maybe, just maybe, he was overwhelmed with the weight of it all. Honestly, how many of these shootings can one nation take?

"We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years and each time I hear the news, I react not as a president but as anybody else would, as a parent. That was especially true today.

I know there is not a parent in America whodoesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do. The majority of those who died today were children. Beautiful little kids between the ages of five and 10 years old.
They had their entire lives ahead of them. Birthdays, graduations, weddings. Kids of their own.

Among the fallen were also teachers, men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams.

Our hearts are broken today for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these little children and the families of those adults who were lost.
Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well. For as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children’s innocence has been torn away from them too early and no words will ease their pain.

As a country, we have been though this too many times. Whether it’s an elementary school in Newtown, a shopping mall in Oregon, or a Temple in Wisconsin, a movie theater in Aurora or a street corner in Chicago, these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, these children are our children."

Yes they are, and so are our guns.