“THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!”

By Edwin Cooney

Nearly a month has passed since that awful Friday morning of December 14^th, 2012.  On that chilly late fall morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, 20-year-old Adam Lanza apparently went berserk and slew his mother, twenty school children and six other adults before turning his weapon upon himself.  Our justifiable outrage emphasizes the reality that there have been way too many of these carnages!  Six of these tragedies have taken place over the past six years including:

Monday, October 2^nd, 2006 in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, Charles Carl Roberts kills six (himself included) and wounded five Amish girls in reprisal against God for the death of his own baby daughter nine years before;

Monday, April 16^th, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a South Korean immigrant shoots 49 students in two separate incidents on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia.  Thirty-two students and faculty are killed while seventeen are injured.  (His own suicide brings the total dead to thirty-three.)

Friday, April 3^rd, 2009, shortly after 10:30 a.m., Jiverly Antares Wong (aka Jiverly Voong) shoots fourteen (himself included) and wounds four others at the American Civic Association Center in Binghamton, New York.

Thursday, November 5^th, 2009 at 1:34p.m., Major Nidal Malik Hasan (a Palestinian born psychiatrist) kills 13 soldiers at the Fort Hood Soldier Processing Center in Killeen, Texas.  Shouting “Allahu Akbar,” Hasan, who was paralyzed from the waist down in the shooting, allegedly has anti-American and terrorist sympathies. He faces a court martial and capital murder charges. Hasan’s toll: 13 killed and 32 wounded.

Friday, July 20^th, 2012 in Aurora, Colorado at around 12:30a.m., James Eagan Holmes first fires tear gas and then live ammunition into the Century Movie Theater killing 12 and wounding 58  -- the largest civilian shooting spree in American history.  Holmes awaits capital murder charges in the state of Colorado at this writing.

Friday, December 14^th, 2012, at around 9:30 a.m,, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, , drives to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut after first killing his mother Nancy and shoots 20 children and six adults before wasting himself.  (Lanza’s totals are 28 dead and 2 wounded.)

I calculate the death and casualty toll from these six shootings at 106 dead and 120  wounded.

I assess this series of American tragedies around the oath required of all witnesses to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

THE TRUTH: As for the truth, we have the casualty figures of 106 dead and 122 wounded resulting from just the above listed instances.  We have the method of carnage, gunshot wounds.  We have the reasonable assumption that shooting is the fastest and most convenient way of committing mass murder.  We also face the obvious reality that guns have been and remain too readily available to the angry and the disturbed.  Finally, we must confront the reality that, since Cain killed Abel, human beings of both sexes, of nearly all ages, nationalities, and walks of life are convinced that they can ultimately solve their most vexing problems by killing one another.

THE WHOLE TRUTH: Although the vast majority of us loathe killing, we nevertheless insist on the necessity for selective killing.  Most of us (me too), would kill to defend those we love.  Second, although capital punishment has been abolished in every country around the globe except in the United States, Russia, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, the People’s Republic of China and a few other isolated national jurisdictions, most every nation is prepared to indulge in the world’s most traditional form of killing: war.  Third, regardless of how angry we are or how incompetent we insist our politicians are, we still expect them to stop or at least minimize “senseless killing.”  Some say it can be done by more effectively controlling the manufacture and sale of firearms.  Others insist that the more the right to carry firearms is sanctioned, the more killings will decrease.  (Of course, those representatives and executives who agree with you and me are "leaders" and those others who have a different idea are “mere politicians!”)  Finally, sad as it may seem, it may be necessary to employ more police units to guard public places (especially schools), but that is a lot to ask of today’s legitimately outraged taxpayer, even if financially well off.

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH: All murders are tragedies for they cheapen and ultimately demoralize us all.  The Newtown, Connecticut murders are especially heart-rending.  One can’t read the individual stories and stated epitaphs by those who loved the twenty-seven victims the best without a tear in one’s throat!  If murder is to be stopped or even minimized, we’ll have to find a solution that’s vastly different than anything we’ve ever conceived.  In other words, when it comes to discovering a way to prevent human beings from killing one another, we haven’t a clue.  As I see it, we’re closer to curing cancer than we are to curing you and me of homicide!

That’s how I see it!  What say you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY