Seemingly unending coverage in the establishment news media. Flags at half-mast. Crocodile tears from the hypocrite-in-chief. Millions of dollars in charitable donations to the families and friends of the victims. It is as if the killing of a group of children and their keepers in a Connecticut school is a uniquely tragic event—one that not only is presumed to touch us all on a visceral level but also justifies a re-examination of how the government regulates guns. The question for me, however, is: what is it about this massacre that makes it more heinous than so many other instances of the murder of innocents?
The main reason appears to be that these were americans. When a united states soldier murdered 16 non-combatants in afghanistan earlier this year, the president shed no tears and people in this country were largely untroubled, even though nine of those victims were children. Continue reading