I was going to let my input on the tragedy today in Connecticut end with the previous post, and I still think that the thoughts I put there are the most important ones I can express.  But I made the mistake of interacting with other people today, both online and in real life, and things that were said and written got me to thinking.

Yes, the world is populated with a lot of evil people.  There have been evil people as long as there have been people and there will be evil people so long as people exist.  We cannot perfect mankind, so we cannot root out all of the evil.  We can try to mitigate evil, to limit it, but we cannot eliminate it.  All efforts to do so have failed miserably.  In order to live in this world, we must accept that there is evil and deal with its consequences.

I’m not saying this as an excuse for evil people killing innocents, because there is no excuse for that.  The greatest gift our Creator gave us was choice, including the choice to follow the path of evil.  We can choose to love or to hate, to do good or bad, to be sinful or just.  Most will choose the just path of life, but some will choose to do evil, sometimes with horrific outcomes.  In those circumstances, all the just can do is to try to prevent it, minimize the suffering, and deal with the pain it causes.  This is just such a case.

And yes, the animal who shot up a school today used guns to do it.  In other words, he abused his rights in such a way that the lives of others were destroyed.  All rights can be abused.  The right of free speech that allowed Martin Luther King to make resounding speeches calling for greater freedom for the oppressed is the same right that can be abused by bigots in calling for their continued oppression.  The right that guarantees that Ann Geddes can create pictures of the innocence and beauty of children can be abused to create child pornography.  The right for us to either worship, or not, as we see fit can also be abused to create cults of personality and tragedies like Jonestown.  My right to own and carry a firearm to protect myself and my family can be abused by a sick bastard to kill a score of school children.

The way to deal with those who abuse their rights to the detriment of others is not to abridge the rights of the vast majority that don’t.  I don’t know how we are to prevent this evil from happening again, but that isn’t it.