Face of Evil II

I recently published two posts on the existence of evil as a palpable entity in the world (Face of Evil and Dual). I recommend re-reading them. Now we have another horrific example, the Sandy Hook massacre of Kindergarten children by a 20-year-old misfit. Adam Lanza was an obscure loner who, while considered strange, was not thought to be insane. Strangely, the divorce court gave his mother complete control over his affairs. It would be interesting to know why.

After an altercation with his mother, he took one of her guns and shot her in the face, a particularly brutal way to shoot someone. He then went to a nearby Elementary School with which he or his mother had no connection, broke in by shooting out the glass in the door and, armed with two handguns, embarked on a rampage. The principal and the school psychologist tried to stop him but were no match for his guns and were shot down dead. (One wonders if things would have ended differently if one of those school officials had been armed. A moot point because the school was a gun free zone.)

He then proceeded to a Kindergarten classroom and shot 27 children to death, finally taking his own life as the police closed in, for a total casualty count of 31 killed including him and his mother. There is no conceivable motive for this most horrendous of acts. No level of insanity would impel such an act, and Adam was not psychotic by all accounts.

As usual, we are currently engaged in an orgy of attempted explanations and preventive action proposals, from greater gun control although no-one has shown how that would have prevented this event outside of complete gun confiscation, which actually has been proposed by one legislator, to greater concern for mental health. Another legislator proposal has been to ban "semi-automatic handguns" in complete ignorance of the fact that all modern handguns, including revolvers, are semi-automatic--firing each time the trigger is pulled. An assault weapons ban is completely irrelevent to this situation in that none were involved. Tighter restrictions on gun sales would also have been ineffective in that the two weapons he used were legally and conventionally purchased by his mother.

So, what to do, for we must do something in accordance with standard liberal philosophy, other than wring our hands? The answer is, there is nothing we can do to prevent this type of perpetrator from committing heinous and inexplicable acts or horror. What we are dealing with, as I have previously stated, is a palpable force of evil. If you prefer demonic possesion, I suppose that's close enough. Evil is loose in the world and getting more powerful with each passing day. Even in pacifist countries like Norway, evil performs. I won't talk about some of the atrocities occurring daily in the Middle East and Africa, and other places around the world.

Gun control, even confiscation, is not the answer. The British are considering banning knives to stem the increase in violence following their gun ban. The only protection against evil is to oppose it with force. Yes, I'm talking about an armed responsible public. Sandy Hook is just the latest in a series of senseless mass killings that could have been prevented or mitigated by armed civilian opposition. Not in every case, of course, but at least potential victims would have a fighting chance against the encroachment of evil.

I know this is controversial, but I am open to a better suggestion. (Please, not forcible confiscation of 17 million guns.) I firmly believe that the only way to defeat evil is to confront it with effective means.