Editor's note: Jay Parini, a poet and novelist, teaches at Middlebury College in Vermont. He has just published "Jesus: The Human Face of God," a biography of Jesus. Follow him on Twitter@JayParini. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) -- The gun outrages continue, the latest the shooting of a gun instructor in Arizona by a 9-year-old girl who was taken to the range by her parents so she could shoot an Uzi, an Israeli-made submachine gun.
The question that the whole world asks is this: Why was a 9-year-old girl allowed even to try to shoot a submachine gun?
I have a further question: Why does anybody not on the front lines of the military in a war zone need to have access to a submachine gun?
It's not as though we haven't had plenty of evidence that this gun thing in America isn't working. Since the ghastly massacre of elementary school children at Sandy Hook on December 14, 2012, by a deranged teenager, as of June there were at least 74 school shootings, on school grounds or in schools themselves. It's commonplace in this country now: A deranged shooter appears, armed to the teeth, out of his mind. Everyone ducks or runs for cover. The shooter proceeds calmly through the building, taking out innocents.
What kind of country have we become? Was this what the Founding Fathers had in mind?
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/28/opinio...Top+Stories%29
More exploitation of childen in the war against the constitution.
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