Rights against Reason, Logic against Interest
By Azher Quader
Chicago, IL
A lunatic goes trigger happy once more in America, this time in Connecticut, and the count is 20 kindergarteners dead plus 6 adults which includes his mom. As the nation drowns in grief again, the same old questions surface, which place rights against reason, logic against interest.
It was Columbine High School, Colorado, in 1999 which claimed the lives of 12 young people. It was Virginia Tech, Virginia in 2007, where 32 innocent youth lost their lives to a gunman. It was 2011 when a nine-year-old girl was killed in the cross fire by another trigger happy gunman attempting to murder an Arizona congresswoman. In July of this year it was a movie theater in Colorado where 13 teenagers got brutally murdered, victims of gun violence, while watching Batman.
How many more young lives are to be lost before we wake up from the nightmare of gun violence? How many more candles are to be blown before our passion for pistols can be extinguished? How much more blood will have to be spilled on the alter of our rights, before our prayers for reason and restraints get answered?
Let those who argue that guns don’t kill explain how even a mad man armed with a knife or an axe could have caused the kind of horror and havoc that we witnessed last Friday at the hands of a lunatic with a gun in his hand. For those who rally for concealed carry, let them explain how an unsuspecting mom, armed with a concealed carry, would have defended herself against the deadly rage of her own son.
With the gruesome killing of 20 kindergarteners in Connecticut, this insane argument against assault weapons has now reached a historic low. While the battle over gun control rages on, just as fiercely today as it has done for all these years in America, the clarion call for non-violence that gets remade by both preachers and politicians at such times notwithstanding, our sons and daughters continue to pay the ultimate price with their lives. Sadly there is no reasonable answer for the families and loved ones of those who are dead and gone in one unsuspecting, fleeting moment. So many precious lives, so many hopes and so many dreams are wiped out forever, so many possibilities never to be realized any more.
May Allah give patience to the bereaved and guide our policy makers to see beyond their ideological blinders, the vision of a more peaceful society where guns of war and weapons of assault belong not in the hands of ordinary citizens but in the hands of those who fight our enemies in wars. This madness must end before more lives are lost.
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