What guns can do

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I really don't want to get into the horrific details of the Connecticut school shooting, just like I don't want to post gratuitous photos of the suffering, terrified children and weeping adults who ought to be allowed some privacy, but there's a point to this:

The gunman in the Connecticut shooting blasted his way into the elementary school and then sprayed the children with bullets, first from a distance and then at close range, hitting some of them as many as 11 times, as he fired a semiautomatic rifle loaded with ammunition designed for maximum damage, officials said Saturday. 

The state's chief medical examiner, H. Wayne Carver II, said all of the 20 children and 6 adults gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., had been struck more than once in the fusillade.

He said their wounds were "all over, all over."

This is what guns do. Or, put another way, it's what guns allow people to do. 

We have laws against weapons of mass destruction. Guns can cause mass destruction and incredible suffering.

Yes, guns require a person to pull the trigger, but guns allow a person who wants to commit an act of violence to do so with the sort of lethal force that brutally took down 26 people, including 20 children, in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday.

That's the fucking point.