On Friday, I could scarcely allow the news of 20 children being killed in a Connecticut elementary school to invade my consciousness as I worked treating sick children with influenza and babies with respiratory virus. But the busyness of my medical practice slows down on the weekends, and then I wasn't able to keep my mind from turning to the events of that awful day.
As a pediatrician and a father, I simply cannot process that children no different from my own and the ones I treat came to such a violent and horrific end in a place that should have been safe. I cannot think what it must have been like for parents to tell their surviving child that their sibling has died.So I have retreated to a safer, more analytical place, to strip painful things of their emotions so I can continue to do what people expect of me. No one can deny that we in America reside in a culture that highly values guns and the near-limitless ability to possess them. It is a value that is written into the DNA of our nation as the Second Amendment to our Constitution.Through the years, the "right to bear arms" has been interpreted and exercised more absolutely than almost any other founding principle of our country. Virtually any real or imagined check on the unconditional freedom to possess guns has been viewed as the most perilous slippery slope threatening one of our most cherished liberties. Whatever I think about guns must be reconciled with this reality.But there is a reckoning that I think has not yet been properly articulated. There are consequences for the choices we as citizens make.The freedom to possess guns and ammunition of practically any destructive capacity without infringement creates a reality that must include tragedies of this sort from time to time. When we highly resolve to defend this liberty, we must accept these consequences. If we are to be truly honest with ourselves and true to this dearly held principle, we must accept that some of our children will die as innocents to adhere to this principle as we do.We will always have people in our society who are mentally ill, antisocial or simply evil, and they will have access to guns because that is the culture we have chosen. It is intellectually dishonest to think otherwise. And it is preposterous to say that we have a mental health system that will take care of these people well enough to protect our innocents or that we have the will to create one, with guns as accessible as they are.Let us continue to say what we believe -- only make sure we say all of it.We will defend absolute gun freedom and accept that some of our kids will die. And, when they do, we will be sorry and feel the pain once more but know that it was a planned loss.Jason V. Terk is a pediatrician in Keller.Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
