Senseless

Elkton, MD, is a quiet little burg in our state's northeastern corner.  It used to be known as a quickie place to get married, because of some local loophole, and people such as Babe Ruth, Debbie Reynolds and TV sinbuster Pat Robertson would elope to Elkton "Marry-land."

These days, Elkton is being spoken of in much sadder terms.  A ten-year-old girl was shot there on New Year's Eve.  It will stun you to read this, but she was shot by a bullet fired from the gun of a New Year's celebrant.

I don't know if this goes on where you live.  It's a local custom around here, and it boggles my mind that someone would say, "Hey! I know a great way to ring out the old year and ring in the new one!  I'll take my pistol out in the yard and shoot the darned thing!  Yahoo!"

Anyone who stayed awake in school long enough to study Isaac Newton will remember it was he who first postulated the theory of gravity when an apple fell off a tree and conked him on the melon.  "What goes up must come down," Newton pointed out, but not harshly enough to be understood by some goober who fires bullets randomly into the air.

Those bullets come down, son.  They don't go into outer space and puncture the sun or anything.  And one of your bullets came down and caused head trauma to a ten-year-old little girl who, as I write this, is on life support in a hospital.

2012 certainly ended on a sad note for her family.  In a larger sense, she is a member of all of our families - the family of mankind.  We have to hope that certain of the older, wiser members of the family will speak words that will encourage the fools among us to be a little more thoughtful.