In this decade, the Dispatch published twelve opinions in which I advocated stricter gun control, consistent with recommendations of all major U.S. medical specialties.
One of these opinions (December, 2012) was a response to a guest columnist's opinion titled, "Why was God AWOL in Newtown?"
God was not AWOL at Newtown then, nor in Parkville this month. God is especially present where humans deliberately make innocent humans suffer or die-the most egregious form of killings. Jesus was innocent. God seemed absent at Golgotha-but wasn't.
Almost 25 years ago a prominent American theologian wrote, "Someone made the gun (that killed a child) available. ... Corporate greed for ever greater profits from gun sales results in proliferation of guns throughout American culture, all under the reasoning that if everyone has guns, everyone can protect the self from everyone else. All gun promoters share in the moral guilt of the death. ... We delude ourselves into believing that we can control the violence that we safely allow. But anxiety mocks our control. Violence, not death, is at the root of our anxieties, and our attempts to channel violence simply increases its ceaseless flow." (M. Suchokie, 1994)
We easily allow guns and then try to reduce human error-"If only the FBI..." But the biggest error is how easily guns are allowed- "If only the NRA...!"
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A warning bell tolls again, and it will toll again. And, "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. ... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." (John Donne)
Dick Peterson
Bloomington
