Know what I hate today? Actually, every day? Selfishness. Sad to say, this is a trait all of us exhibit from time to time in ways large and small. The trivial and unintended ways people display a me-first attitude can be forgiven and forgotten without a second thought. But what about major acts that display self-interest to the extent that the rights of others are trampled on? I’m thinking about Newtown, Connecticut as a glaring example. For starters, the man who committed this rampage was, sane or not, guilty of an act that took selfishness to a new low. How despicable to murder your own mother, and then slaughter dozens of little children and their teachers. What callous disregard for the lives of others – including the thousands of relatives and friends of the victims, people whose lives will be changed forever.
As we all know, calls for increased gun control erupted immediately, and the debate continues. Obviously, something needs to be done. Mass killings have gone from a terrible rarity to terribly commonplace. Is the solution gun control? That’s not a debate the Medical Examiner wants to enter. It is truly sad to think that the bodies of those 20 murdered children were still lying where they fell in Sandy Hook classrooms, hours away from being released to their families, yet the anti-gun control side of the debate was already firing back with both barrels. It came across as so unfeeling, so selfish, so callous. It sounded like, “Ok, so maybe somebody just mowed down a couple dozen little children, sure. But by God, you’re not going to pry my gun away from me, no sir!” It came across as, MY RIGHTS are more important than the lives of those children. And perhaps in the larger scheme of things that argument has validity. But the timing made – and continues to make – the anti-gun control lobby appear completely self-obsessed, demanding their own rights, even at a time of national shock and grief. That is selfishness at its worst.