The Consoler-in-Chief Goes Beyond

“In the coming weeks,” says the President at the Newtown Memorial, “I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens--from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators--in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.

“Because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? 

"Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”

Cutting through the shock and sadness of yet another gun disaster, this time Barack Obama goes beyond his role as Consoler-in-Chief and promises that, even if “the politics are too hard,” he will take on the gun lobby and their creatures in Congress.

What he will have to overcome is blinding moral ignorance such as that of a GOP House lawmaker who now burbles about the school principal, “I wish to God she had an M-4 in her office locked up so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out and...takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.”

Why stop there? Why not arm the six-year-olds as well? Why not turn all our schools into OK Corrals where a new generation can learn to be Wyatt Earps rather than law-abiding citizens?

But, as the President reminds us, those twenty children in Newtown had other names and he solemnizes them:

“Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeline, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Benjamin, Avielle, Allison...”

Not a Wyatt Earp in the lot.
 
Update: One pro-gun senator reconsiders, portending sleepless nights for NRA lobbyists, no doubt with firearms at the ready.