Tears

The news of the school shootings in Connecticut has me in tears at my desk.  I'm resisting the urge to go the four blocks to my kids' school just to hug them as hard as I can.

What sort of person turns a gun on a room full of kindergarteners?  Who thinks that up and goes to the effort to carry out that plan?  Did that really make him feel powerful?

My thoughts on gun control written after another mass shooting are here, but I'm feeling less generous about it today.  As a culture we must set better priorities.  We have created an environment where an abstract sense that everyone is entitled to own guns in this country trumps a safe reality for our children.

Kindergarteners.  The line in the news feed that did me in was "An entire kindergarten classroom is unaccounted for."

You know what I did last night?  I went to Quinn's holiday concert at his school.  It was just the half dozen kindergarten rooms in performance in an overly packed auditorium.  Hundreds of people crammed shoulder to shoulder just to hear small, adorable children sing sweet songs out of tune.  The first piece was a class carrying electric candles singing, "Light a candle for peace, light a candle for love...."  I didn't even know any of those children and I was in tears the whole time.

It's like someone today literally gunned all those tiny singers down.  Different adorable children I don't know.

I just don't understand.  I really don't.