Christmas slaughter in Connecticut

NEW YORK, USA – This is like a nightmare that does not end. I thought Columbine was bad enough. Newtown, Connecticut is a whole lot worse.

There is something that tears in your gut and rips your insides out when children are killed in this way – slaughtered like sheep 11 days before Christmas. The same Christmas that is supposed to celebrate a man Christian call, “The Prince of Peace.”

Twenty elementary school children, 5 to 10 years old, murdered by a gunman who also killed his mother, a teacher at the Sandy Hook school.

I came back to my apartment and watched the coverage. After 30 minutes, I had to step away because I could feel the tears coming up.

I don’t know anybody in Newtown, but it affected me so. The Christmas season and the madness of it all made the horrible feeling worse.

Philippine embassy spokesman Elmer Cato said on Facebook that they are checking to see if any of the children murdered is a Filipino-American.

“(The) Philippine Embassy and Philippine Consulate General in New York checking whether there are Filipino-American casualties in Connecticut school shooting,” Cato said.

A former student at the Ateneo, Edwin Khu, called it “disturbing and disheartening.” Crazy, m-f-s..t is more like it.

President Barack Obama looked visibly shaken when he said too many of these shootings have happened the past few years and months.

The only time I felt this way was in 1990 when an earthquake collapsed a school building in Nueva Ecija and I could see the limbs of children sticking out of the wreckage as they tried to run away and save their lives in a shoddily built building.

At least that was a disaster which you can rationalize in your head by saying it’s probably God’s will.

Gun culture

This is so mind-boggling that TV anchor men, journalists, police, the FBI  and other law enforcers who have probably seen their share of horrible events were stopped cold and rendered speechless by the murder of so many innocents.

Will this change the gun culture here? No.

The mantra of the National Rifle Association (NRA) is that people kill people, guns do not. They also have the Republican Party in their pocket.

One would hope that the outrage generated by this senseless carnage would help push reasonable limits on gun ownership. I just don’t see that happening. The debate on this issue will never end.

Gun right owners point to the Second amendment of the US Constitution. It reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Chances are the guns used in this shooting were legally bought. It’s a crazy arrangement, but it’s legal here. Constitutional even.

I couldn’t watch the interview on MSNBC of this Grade 3 student whose arms were wrapped around his mom describing how the bullets whizzed by his head before a teacher pulled him safely into a room.

He had that glazed look of a survivor that you would normally see from victims of mass murders in war zones like Darfur or in Syria. He is 8 years old. – Rappler.com