Are we, simply, doomed as a nation?

It took all the energy I could muster Friday to leave home and go see the Lakers and Wizards. Not because the Lakers (and, in their way, the Wizards) aren't an interesting story, but because I didn't want to leave my kids. Not Friday. What happened in Newtown, Conn., Friday morning revealed a damaged country. Something is fundamentally wrong with us, and to those literalists who say, "There's nothing wrong with me, or my country; I didn't pull the trigger and I don't know anyone who would," please, go click some other link and leave the rest of us alone for a spell. I have to get this out. When even children -- chosen, apparently, deliberately, not as unfortunate and innocent bystanders, as has been the case for so long in our cities, not that we seem to care much -- are not immune from the horrific carnage of a madman, we are in a place that desperately requires God's love and grace, for we seem incapable of providing it to one another. We are killing one another, in one insane act after another, and we spend the succeeding days arguing about the delivery system of death rather than why our lives have become devalued. Why are so many mentally disturbed people turning to mass murder as their final act of an incoherent life? Why can't we reach them before they reach for the assault rifles? What began as an act of compassion (or, as some maintain, an act of cynicism to lessen state financial burdens), releasing many of the nation's mentally ill from institutions and asylums throughout the 1960s and '70s, did not work out as intended (this story, three decades old, details the thinking behind the decision). Recessions, wars and the decline of the middle class' earning power have only increased the numbers of mentally ill people on the streets, while decreasing our ability as communities to provide assistance to the mentally ill and depressed who live with us and among us -- our troubled children, our silent neighbors, our detached and withdrawn friends. (Warning: There's some rough language in here. But this terrifies me and it should terrify you.) We are not as religious as we used to be. I wonder how that has played a part in all of this. Not because I think belief in God is the answer for every troubled soul (though it no doubt is, or would be, for many), but because spending less time together, period -- whether in church, or in community centers, or at block parties, or just talking over the fence -- contributes, I think, to a collective detachment from one another. I don't know the people on my block very well. We don't spend time in one another's homes; we don't go out to eat or to the movies or to local events with one another. They're busy; I'm busy, my wife is busy. I don't know them, and I don't know what they're doing at night, when the doors are closed. This scares me. We are all scared. We are way too permissive these days. We let our kids play the goriest, bloodiest video games imaginable, and watch movie after movie in which the plot centers solely on new and creative ways to slaughter as many people as possible. (Again: I know movies glorified gangsters in the 1920s and '30s. But we're refining that unfortunate pattern.) We tell people who want to report crimes to "stop snitchin';' we tell black kids who want to achieve in school that they're "acting white;" we let our sons walk around with their pants halfway down their rear ends and we let our daughters pierce everything, and we let both of them get inked up more than the Seventh Fleet.

And, yes, there are the guns. Analogies at 20 paces. Yes, guns don't kill people; people kill people. But people with guns kill people a lot faster, and kill a lot more of them, than people with, say, a battleax. Or a spear. Or a club. I'm sure there were mass killings before there were high capacity magazines that can kill 75 people before they can take a step forward. But those people had a much better chance of defending themselves. Charles Whitman, 25, was a deeply disturbed person who snapped in the evening of July 31,1966. He killed his mother, then his wife, left notes detailing how much he loved them both and didn't really understand why he did what he did. He then took a truck full of guns to the University of Texas at Austin, where he went into the school's 307-foot tower and ascended to the observation deck. He killed the receptionist and several other people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, before walking out onto the deck and opening fire on dozens of people within the radii of his scopes. He killed more than a dozen and wounded many more before Austin policemen finally broke through the barricades he'd set up and killed him. It took him 96 minutes to kill and wound all those people at UT. The person who slaughtered 20 children and six adults Friday morning before killing himself at Sandy Hook Elementary School needed only about 15 minutes, according to the initial reports. The Constitution is rightly revered as a living document, whose declarations of rights and freedoms are still our bedrock as a nation. I would humbly point out here, however, that Article I, Section II of that document counted my forefathers who were in chains at the time as three-fifths of a human being. This was done so that pro-slavery states could use their slave populations for greater representation in the nascent national government, without having to deal with the mess of, you know, actually allowing them to vote. (Women -- well, white women, I guess -- were counted as whole persons. But, yeah, no voting for them either, for about 125 more years.) This is the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America: 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. We have spent more than two centuries arguing what the Founding Fathers meant in that really poorly constructed sentence. (How about "As we believe that a well-regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed"? We'd still argue about it, but it makes a lot more sense.) I am not part of this country's gun culture. I say that, again, as a matter of fact, not as a pejorative. It is clear that there are millions of people for whom owning, using, collecting and sharing guns is an integral part of their culture. It is part of the connective tissue between fathers, sons and grandsons. They know how guns work, and they are respectful about that, and they teach those they love how to use them in a responsible manner. Many are hunters, and they bond, whether in a duck blind or a deer stand, and their guns are a part of that bonding, and it is important to them. They don't want someone -- me, for example -- judging them on it, and they certainly don't want any government, federal or otherwise, telling them what guns they can and can't buy and keep in their homes.

And they damn sure don't understand why more laws are needed than are already on the books, laws that would only make it harder for them, the law-abiding, non-crazy people, to have guns. They are in the NRA, but not because they share that lobby's interest in protecting gun manufacturers -and that's who the NRA serves, the companies that make guns. Let's just say for the sake of this column that I'm not talking to any of you. I have no problem with any of you. I don't want to take any of your guns. But is there nothing short of no law that can be done to better regulate the sale of guns in our country? Connecticut has very tough gun laws on the books, according to everything I've read. The problem is there are loopholes the size of Big Baby Davis to those laws. For example, and correct me if I'm wrong (and I know you will), if you buy a gun from a licensed gun dealer in Connecticut, you have to provide both a gun license and an eligibility certificate -- a document specifically designed to keep felons, the mentally ill, illegal aliens or anyone acquitted of a crime by reason of mental illness from getting a weapon. This makes sense to everyone, right? And, there is a two-week waiting period in the state before a licensed dealer can transfer a gun such as the "long rifle" that was one of the reported weapons used in the Newton shootings. Again, we all think that's good. But, if the purchase/transfer of such a gun is made through a private dealer, there is no waiting period. This is the part the NRA always leaves out. To (again) make a basketball analogy: owners spend tens of millions of dollars on lawyers during these NBA lockouts to draw up the most draconian language they can find to supposedly make it as tough as possible for teams to spend money on players. And then, seven seconds after an agreement, they spend millions more on GMs and "capologists" who find loopholes in those laws and allow them to legally circumvent the cap or luxury tax provisions. Or, to bring it closer to home: why do rich folks have tax attorneys? Why does everybody, rich or not, look for every deduction they can find in their taxes before April 15? (Now I can write off this lunch at Burger King because we , talked about my job while I was eating that Whopper, right?) The Second Amendment, I believe, guarantees people the right to own and keep guns in their homes -- even semiautomatic ones. But it was ratified in 1791. I believe most intelligent people would allow that circumstances have changed somewhat in our nation since then. We have decided as a nation, for example, that black people a) can no longer be slaves, b) can vote, c) can not be discriminated against in the public schools, or in where they can live, or work. The Constitution, being a living document, can be amended or changed. Such as: The right of the people to keep and bear Arms and ammunition shall not be infringed. Nor shall the right of the people to keep and bear Arms and ammunition to secure a free State through a well-regarded Militia, or National Guard, be infringed. There shall be, however, uniform standards throughout the States for the sale and distribution of all Arms and ammunition, whether public or private. That begins to close at least some a few of the loopholes that make it impossible to stop a crazy

person from buying a weapon of mass destruction. That keeps Joe Jones, gunshop owner, in business, as well as Jane Jones, private collector. It's just that Joe and Jane will be operating under the same laws and rules now. They'll both have to do background checks on anyone that wants to legally buy a gun -- the person (I don't want to give him any more attention; Google him if you want) who shot up the movie theatre in Aurora, Colo., in July bought the weapons he used legally. Adding "ammunition" to the amended Amendment could allow states some sort of control (sorry, but that's the right word) over the tens of thousands of rounds that people can legally purchase. The person in Colorado bought 6,000 rounds of ammunition in the days before his rampage over the Internet. Legally. I am out of my depth here and am looking for guidance from gun lovers and users -- what would be the reason for any one individual to buy 6,000 rounds of ammunition? I can't buy Claritin for my allergies more than twice a month because it contains pseudoephedrine, which people also use to make crystal meth. Every time I go to the CVS I have to give my driver's license to the pharmacist, who looks at something called MethCheck to make sure I'm not running a meth lab in my basement. And, you know what? That's OK with me. This MethCheck thing seems to be working, at least in some places, and there is debate about it. Why couldn't every gun dealer, licensed or private, be required to have something called GunCheck, which would require a gun buyer to provide a valid license? The seller could then make the normal checks (is the buyer a felon? Mentally ill? Etc.), and also see if that individual has already bought, say, two guns in a given month. If so, they couldn't buy another one until the following month. Would that end our republic? Would our way of life cease to exist if you were limited to buying 1,000 rounds of ammo a month? Most importantly, would it be an insult to the Founding Fathers if we could just have a reasoned conversation about all this, and get beyond the politics? Politicians will never address this in a meaningful way, having reservoirs of moral courage with a shelf life that won't last through the first night of Kwanzaa. We have to do this. I know every position I have on this isn't right. I want to hear from people who disagree with me. But what I don't want is polemics and name-calling. I don't hate America and I don't want a nanny state. I also don't want someone who is severely disturbed to be able to buy guns and 6,000 rounds of ammo, and walk into a movie theatre and start shooting people. I don't want 6 and 7 year olds who haven't learned to multiply and divide yet to be massacred, and for their principal to have to end her life by throwing herself in front of a boy younger than she is who has this in his hands, shooting children in her school. I am honored to mention her by name. Her name is Dawn Hochsprung. She and the other adults who stepped in front of bullets are heroes. Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old teacher who kept the killer out of her room with nothing more than her body, is a hero. May God bless her as well, and her family, and all the families of all the children and staffers who were killed or wounded. We cannot do this a la carte. We cannot act on guns without acting on mental illness, we cannot act on our deteriorating sense of community without acting on the violent culture that we live in. We have to do all of it, the uncomfortable, heavy, all of it, for there to be any impact. There is no quiet, calm community in which you can hide. The insane and the guns and the culture find you, wherever you live, on the west side of Chicago, or in Newtown, or Aurora, or Clackamas, Oregon or Brookfield, Wisc., or Blacksburg, Va., or Fort Worth, Texas, or Washington, D.C., or Nickel Mines, Penn., and a

dozen other cities that have had to bury their dead and hope that their deaths meant something. "We cannot accept events like this as routine," President Barack Obama said Sunday night. No, we cannot. I have cried all weekend. And I am afraid to take my children to school Monday. But I will take them. They deserve a chance to live. Not to learn. To live.