Time to Reflect

I was starting to write my column, as I do every week. This week I was especially excited. The NFL offered us a weekend of encounters like Dallas vs. Pittsburgh, San Francisco vs. New England and more.

I was just starting the second paragraph when I turn on the TV and see the news of a spree killing in a Connecticut elementary school. I asked myself: Right now what does it matter who wins or loses a game of American football? Whether Pittsburgh, my favorite team, wins or loses, life goes on. If they get eliminated in the December playoffs, they get to play again come September.

Unfortunately, for those children from Sandy Hook Elementary School, life does not go on. For the victims and the victims’ families, life does not go on. This is a tragedy, and the worst thing about this tragedy is that it could have been prevented. On a day like today, I am unable to write about sports or results or great players.

It is impossible for me to understand how a person can reach such a level of madness as to shoot at elementary school children. It is devastating, it is incomprehensible. What is equally difficult to understand is how that person, or anyone else who lives in the United States, can just go into a shop and come out again armed with a semi-automatic rifle.

It is Americans’ obsession with their constitution — more specifically, with the Second Amendment — that allows these acts of violence to take place.

Until the use of firearms is regulated, episodes like these will continue to occur. Enough is enough. How many people have to die before the society of this country realizes that, as long as we all have firearms, we are going to go on killing each other?

Now is the time to instigate a change. The United States Constitution was created in the 18th century to give the people the right to own firearms. Now, in the 21st century, the time has come to repeal that right.

If the death of dozens of children — in their classrooms, at the hands of a monster — doesn’t make us reflect and change our laws in order to prevent these tragedies, I doubt if anything ever will. How much blood must be spilled before we take a step toward peace? The senseless deaths of these innocent children sadden me hugely, but what saddens me even more is that their deaths might have been prevented had we had stricter legislation.

My apologies if you were expecting a sports column, but on a day like today, sports are just a minor detail.

I like sports, but I love life more.