Victims, Plaintiffs and Defendants

 

None are so blind as those who refuse to see.

To those who are not in denial, it is plain that the media is having a field day with the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting rampage, and that the same media is totally in the tank for the gun grabber lobby.

Going along with this media feeding frenzy is Governor Dannel P. Molloy of Connecticut.  He is asking that there be, as public memorial gesture, a moment of silence this coming Friday.  I'm completely okay with that.

And he is asking that churches ring their bells.  I can accept that, with a few reservations.  The reservations are that once upon a time, in the old country, the ringing of church bells was the signal for the pogroms against the Jews to begin.  When I was in my elementary school years, my grandparents lived around the block from a Catholic church.  My grandmother never really made peace with the daily tintinnabulation of the church bells, having, as a young girl, come to America in the process of escaping a pogrom in her town.  So while the particular church bell ringings requested by the Governor will carry none of the evil accoutrements of those heard by my grandmother in the old country, there still is a little bit of baggage in the trunk for some of us.

But the Governor is specifically requesting that the bells be rung 26 times.

There were 28 people killed in that rampage, including the shooter himself (whose name will not be set forth in this posting).  It is appropriate, if not imperative, that he not be glorified in the same breath as his victims.

So now we are down to 27 people.  They are the 26 victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School itself, plus one victim who was killed off premises.  The 27th victim – actually, the very first victim chronologically – was the shooter's mother.  Why should she not be counted among the victims?  Why is she being marginalized?

I see an agenda here.  Recall that, notwithstanding the hoplophobes' hue and cry for more gun control, no anti-gun statute could have prevented the rampage because the guns used were taken by the shooter from his mom, who collected them.

Lawyers, myself included, have been trained to find and target partners with whom to share the blame for situations.  It is fair to state that few if any lawyers would fail to entertain the thought that the gunman's mother (or, now, her estate) may be at fault for not properly securing her lethal hardware.

If I represented a party who planned to sue the old lady's estate, I would advise the client to not declare the old lady to be a victim on par with those who were killed at the school.

And so, I smell a device.