When gun massacres are chalked up to bad luck

Chicago Tribune ^ | 24 feb 2016 | Francis Wilkinson

[rellimpank]

Writing of the "ethical confusion which overtook American society in the Industrial Age," Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager wrote of deadly social consequences for which no individuals felt in any way responsible:

"These men were caught in the meshes of a business system which had not yet developed a moral code of its own and to which the old codes were irrelevant. The manufacture and sale of impure foods, dangerous drugs, infected milk, poisonous toys, might produce disease or death, but none of those involved in the process — retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, advertisers, corporations, directors or stockholders — realized that they were guilty of murder."

A similar confusion — mystery, really — hovered over a Connecticut courtroom this week, where parents of children massacred in their classrooms wondered how 20 children and six adults could be murdered in their school without anyone being in any way responsible for the deaths.

[rellimpank]

--ambivalent rambling about the legal system--

[dirtboy]

without anyone being in any way responsible for the deaths.

We know who is responsible. It's just that too many people want to blame someone other than the criminal and his parents.

[Bob]

There were two parties responsible for those deaths:

1. The shooter

2. Those who created the “gun-free” zone where he was able to carry out the massacre without any concern for resistance,

[IronJack]

There IS someone responsible for the Sandy Hook murders: the murderer. Displacing the blame dilutes the blame, which lies with him and him alone. Not his tools. No this parents. Not “the system” or “society.” Him.