First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,
Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud
Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire
To his grim idol. (Paradise Lost 1.392-96)
Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains—“besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday morning. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily—sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by blighting our children’s lives by the death of a parent, a schoolmate, a teacher, a protector. Sometimes this is done by mass killings (eight this year), sometimes by private offerings to the god (thousands this year).
Read Garry Wills' entire op-ed and see what we have become as a country.
Below are the firearms found at the scene in Sandy Hook Elementary School. The Bushmaster was used in the killings.
Descriptions of the guns may be found here.
An AR-15 is usually capable of firing a rate of 45 rounds per minute in semiautomatic mode.
Lanza used one of the pistols to kill himself.
 |
| Bushmaster .223 caliber Remington semiautomatic |
 |
| Sig Sauer 9 mm |
 |
| Glock 10mm pistol Auto |
