In my youth, young people protested because they didn’t want to get killed in Vietnam. Today, they protest because they don’t want to get shot at school. Notwithstanding the descent into ever lower circles of hell that this shift represents, the response from lawmakers is the same: paralysis. Why? Because too many of them owe their careers to arms manufacturers.
This, not the Second Amendment, is the altar upon which the young are sacrificed. The Second Amendment has been around since 1789 and was included in the Constitution mainly so that slave owners could arm themselves against the possibility of slave rebellions. Only in the last several decades has it been invoked to justify the slaughter of school children. Let us hope that public outcry will overcome the power of the gun industry with its specious invocation of the Second Amendment.
Kathe Geist
Charlemont