Gun Control: Who's in the Crosshair, Ms. Lukas?

Sandy Hook Elementary School Mourns
(Mario Tama/Getty Images and Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

If a picture speaks a thousand words, there are no words convey the message and feelings following the Sandy Hook Elementary School Nightmare.

If the mass slaying of 6-year-olds isn't enough to move the United States of America, it's about time we consider:  what will?

The world is moved.  The world is watching.  The world is still...waiting...

The urgency to reform gun laws and the price paid for our long-standing cutbacks in mental health services could not be made clearer than with this story.  Our negligence in tending to responsible social issues lies naked -- raw -- before us.  Our most vulnerable have paid the ultimate price for our neglect and stalemates.

Those we are entrusted to care for, raise, nurture, and protect have been lost.  Anywhere else, anytime else, anyone else, we know the answer.  We've done it before and would do it again.  The United States would declare war.

Agree or disagree, that's what we do in America.  Our soil, our children, our reason, our response.  War.

No small irony.  The United States would resort to weapons.

I am not debating that issue now.  In fact, to the contrary.

However, given that the United States would respond with a "justified military response" in any other situation resembling this attack on our most vulnerable, I find the position of Ms. Carrie Lukas, Managing Director of the Independent Women’s Forum and Forbes Contributor, much more than a surprise.  Apparently, Ms. Lukas wants to leave the kids out of the debate...and talk.  Finally.  Talk. 

This is amazing news.  A new response to bloodshed.  A new supporter of discussion and peaceful response.  However, Ms. Lukas, can we make it fast?  There's a "message" in the picture.  We're running late.

I'm not debating gun laws here.  I'm noting the problems we are facing in simply beginning to discuss the issues.  I'm writing about what I see going on with our elected parties and those who speak as pundits.  It's no surprise that the United States is getting nowhere with any issues right now.

If we wonder why Washington struggles with action and reform, Carrie Lukas may typify the mindset best.  The insight provided in her Forbes article, Using Children To Pass Gun Laws Is Grotesque and Childish, explains a lot about politics right now.

Lukas expressed a number of points that I found troubling; however, the gist of her article is what I found unimaginably sad, yet telling.  There is a futility masking any possibility of progress in ending escalating terror and violence.  Ms. Lukas is an example of those representing us in Washington right now.  It's no surprise that America's hopes for change are looking grim.

My first point.  Lukas' title.  Involving children in anything to do with guns is "Grotesque and Childish".  That is the point after all.  That is exactly why we find gun control stories in the headlines everyday now.  Those who own guns know that this incident was different.  Grotesque.  This gunman was able to use young children as targets in his psychotic rage and as objects for his horrific illness.  This sick young man used guns...and children...  Grotesque is exactly how the world sees it.

Lukas' insight was that the president was posing with children.  Yes.  Obama was pictured with children who wrote letters to the White House in an effort to take action, be heard, and begin discussions about the possibility for help.  Kids leading the cause to pass laws to solve a looming constitutional and social issue.  Her conclusion,  "let’s have that conversation as adults, and leave the children out of it" was stronger and longer than how the United States government can saves the lives of our babies and everyone else.

Ms. Lukas, I think you're missing the point.  Using children is grotesque...and we have to do something about it.  Now! 

In 2001, stories ran with President Bush posing on top of disintegrating concrete and twisted steel graves.  According to Lukas, most of us missed the point.  As readers, we were deceived.  The man had motives.  A tasteless GOP photo op. 

World Trade Center (Stan Honda/AFP - Getty Images File and Doug Mills/AP)

At that time, I'm sure Lukas was equally appalled by President Bush.  Likely, she was rendered incapable of discussing terrorism...disgusted with the Commander-and-Chief himself... demanding the president just leave the World Trade Center out of the pictures.

Ms. Lukas, I think I get your point?

Personally, when I saw President Bush posing on top of the World Trade Center ruins in 2001, the last thing I thought or cared about was how the scene was serving President Bush.  Your non partisan message is that the president was using the exclusive photos of the carnage for the repulsive purpose of political gain.  The message in the "ink blot" of the story?  What we should have seen.  Courtesy of Ms. Carrie Lukas.  You fell mysteriously silent then, when we needed you to speak to us and educate us about motives and giant conspiracies.

Ms. Lukas, if "adults" like you are waiting to act on how to stop these man-made catastrophes, holding out on any attempt to regulate and update antiquated laws, making it impossible to pass legislation and effect real change, we're all in trouble.  Finally, it's time to let go of your own paranoia.  President Barack Obama is not the evil, conniving threat you perceive here.

20 beautiful, promising children and 6 caring, amazing adult school staff members lost their lives on December 14, 2012, in one of the most gruesome horrors this country has ever seen.

Rather than discussing what we can do to solve the issue, Ms. Lukas doesn't like the picture.  As an adult, it was my belief we were supposed to progress to "using our words" to communicate.  With or without your perception of the picture, Ms. Lukas.

Lukas advises that we choose not to focus on the children, but the manipulative, scheming, grotesque democratic message?  What is really grotesque here?

What do I see in the picture of Obama with the children?

• We're late.  It took a grotesque act such as this to get our attention.

• There are kids MISSING in the picture.  The children who lost their lives.

• Children are relaying the message for children lost.

• If we had acted sooner, there would be no children in the picture.  Leave the kids out of it?  There they are..."kids...scratch(ing) out some tear-jerking pleas for the President to put an end to nightmares"?

• Not exactly President Obama seizing the occasion as a photo op.

Lukas is not the only person guilty of dragging her feet, questioning motives, looking for some hidden, pointless meaning in pictures...and delaying progress.  This is a very serious issue for Washington --- before we can even begin to discuss guns, rights, freedom, the Constitution, and our most precious resource.  Our children.

Ms. Lukas, it's time for YOU to put down the fairytale book with the pretty pictures and join "a real conversation about the efficacy of gun laws and what measures might prevent mass shootings and keep deadly weapons out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill."  It is generally accepted that most of us across the world possess the "natural instincts... to want to shield children from life’s pain... and honor the universal, human "desperate desire to protect children from harm".  Your insistence that these drives and passions serve to "distract from the truly important, adult business of assessing what solutions are actually available" may well be our problem.  Grotesque.

In California, right now, children experience a new drill.  Children aren't "left out of it".

School and classroom exits are locked on a daily basis now.  Door windows, that used to give a glimpse into the hallways, are blacked-out so that no one in the hallway can see into classrooms.  Fire and Earthquake Drills continue, but now, the "Lock-down Drill" is performed more than any other.  Alarms sound, K-12 kids crawl beneath their desks, teachers take shelter, and now a new, more "realistic" technique has been added.  Last week, counselors ran down the hallways, pounding loudly on each door while the kids and teachers were seeking shelter.  Kids screamed.  Teachers jumped -- even knowing this additional act of realism was about to take place.  Children could hear the pounding on doors approaching their own classroom and then, progressing down the hallway to the next and next.  America's children have a reminder of those little children at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  I only wish we could leave our children out of it.  I think Ms. Lukas has been "offer(ed) a fresh pillow, inviting her to think that somehow it will foster only happy visions"...leaving her out of it.

Ms. Lukas, it was grotesque that children became involved, grotesque that they are living with these re-enactments each day, and grotesque that you can claim to even try to leave kids out of it.  Perhaps, you can visit a classroom and explain your thoughts and feelings as the alarm blasts and our kids practice taking cover and strain to hold back tears of terror.  You can explain to them that their fear is childish and math and science are only part of a good education.  My fear is that maybe, one day, they will actually get used to the drills, because we didn't tend to our "true adult business".

While you are engaged in the "adult discussion" of ensuring stalemates in gun control legislation and President Obama's publicity tactics, children practice how to survive in school and teachers explain to the curious, "I will throw desks and chairs at anyone coming in.  We must stay in our positions until we hear from a uniformed police officer outside."

I get your point, Ms. Lukas.  Now, maybe, you can listen to mine.

The pictures that have been chosen are the only pictures the news outlets can share.  After all, the real carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary could not be printed.  The story was so horrific that we see the only pictures fit to view.  That is the saddest and most grotesque reality of all.  There are first responders who will relive that horrendous day until there last breathe.  I'm sure they could tell you a thing or two about pictures...and children...and "Nightmares and soft pillows".

Let's get to this real conversation you speak of Ms. Lukas.  Move mountains.  Work across the aisle.  Show us what adults do!

Perhaps, you had a point.

We have to do something.  You are either with us and the children, or you are on the side of mentally-ill, child-murdering maniacs. 

Based upon your entire article, there is more truth in that statement than I ever wanted to hear or believe.   Now that you have finished analyzing the most tasteful photo that could be taken to reference the horrors of the Sandy Hook story, perhaps you can move on and get to the "adult business of assessing what solutions are actually available."  Discussion, compromise, change, action and "getting along well with others" may be good starting points in this adult brainstorming session you reference.  Why put off 'til 2016 what should have been handled on the Capitol Hill Playground in 1990?  Why did a "crazed gunman" (perhaps an injured and neglected child himself) drag children into the issue of gun control, and why did you fail to see the picture for what it is:  a representation of all that we haven't done, are doing too late, and who is missing...and left standing...to defend the rights of our children?

Ms. Lukas, who is doing the less important adult business of answering for "Our natural instincts... to want to shield children from life’s pain"?  Who is "fixating on our desperate desire to protect children from harm"?  Not you.

What would get you to move or be moved?  When would you stand up and put all politics aside?  The picture you paint with words is grotesque and inexcusable.

Children.  Leave them out of the business of gun control?  The pictures seem to say that it's too late for that.

Show us what big kids do.  Take care of the little ones, Ms. Lukas.