OPINION: Over the emotional cliff

The watchword was healing. America would not need to heal if it were not divided by the ceaseless drumbeat of interest groups trying to gain an advantage or media outlets chasing readers or viewers. Politicians at every level seeking photo ops flood into local communities and further disrupt the ability of those actually affected to deal with their situations. Officials search for answers and grasp at anything that could possibly prevent a recurrence where we live. They demand harsher penalties, armed officers in elementary schools, airport style security screening and bans of private ownership of various types of firearms.

The detail is excruciating. Why do we need to know that the shooter in Newtown destroyed his home computer before beginning his rampage? Is it a reminder to copycats who would like to try it themselves to cover their tracks? Why does America need to know where relatives of those directly involved work or the names of relatives?

Suddenly, we are instructed by “experts” about best tactics when active shooters are present. Others struggle to define the difference in a clip and a magazine or the much more difficult task of describing an assault weapon.

But much like the massive post 9-11 TSA presence at our airports, nothing seems likely to make much of a difference. Except for School Resource Officers like those assigned to Commerce Schools. I had occasion to work on a special event at the school auditorium with SROs and found the officers to be well prepared and equipped with the tools of their profession along with full campus access. They have to be ready for anything.

Like the bizarre Aurora, Colorado Batman movie massacre, the Newtown villain was dressed in combat gear and carried military grade weapons. Was he acting out a cruel fantasy? Did firing the guns hundreds of times at helpless people make the slight young man feel important when dressing Goth did not?

Now, I have been issued .223 caliber military weapons and still respect them. I had the rare overseas experience of teaching a priest how to use an M-16 as he had made a personal decision to stand and fight with the rest of us if necessary. But I am puzzled why a mother would want such an expensive lethal weapon —same for the heavy Sig and Glock pistols. Yet she boasted in local bars of having them and, ironically, taught her troubled son to shoot.

I inspected an M-4 Carbine a few months ago offered by an expert marksman. They are all around. Interested in the new optics and other improvements over my day, I was impressed by how naturally it fell into place in my hands. If someone had asked if I wanted to punch some holes in a target, I probably would have accepted. But the weapon has little practical use away from professionals such as police and military.

Unlike many kids and young adults today, I avoid realistic, mayhem filled video games with bodies and vehicles flying everywhere embellished with colorful explosions and accompanied by adrenalin-pumping music Strange, I never heard any theme music while in the military or to accompany the “GI you die” calls across the perimeter.

Could it be that this Newtown perpetrator longed to be respected or yearned to feel the rush? Or was he a lonely computer whiz living on the fringe of society? We cannot fathom the actions of such a person so find ourselves rationalizing that he has to be crazy or perhaps possessed. And we are left to wonder in our grief about the victims and the survivors.

My dad had incredible eyesight and could whack the thousand-yard targets used in WW II infantry training. When my turn to wear the same suit every day came along, I eventually found myself on a shooting range. Easy expert ribbon there. The range sergeant soon asked where I learned to shoot and when I responded it was not in the Air Force, he laughed and said he had assumed not.

The debate concerning our Second Amendment rights has been reignited by the latest atrocity, but it often overlooks the carnage on almost any weekend in our nation’s largest cities. What has happened to our communities? Armed gangs range out of their city enclaves to terrorize others and to operate their deadly enterprises on our streets. The prisons are overflowing with felons many related in one way or another to a massive drug trade. We are unable to control our borders. Liberal states suddenly are decriminalizing drug use as their prisons overflow.

Society thus sinks beneath the waves of self indulgence. When does it end? If the forces of evil are left unchecked, our culture will weaken until it is ripe for the picking by the millions around the world who covet it for themselves. Is that the wake-up coffee I smell?

Nelson Nix is a retired marketing communications executive. A Commerce native and Commerce High School and University of Georgia graduate, he has lived in the Mid-West and on both coasts.