Ms. McCarthy Goes to Washington

Carolyn McCarthy deserves our sympathy, no doubt. But we should have served up that sympathy from a greater distance. On November 5, Ms. McCarthy won a surprise victory in a congressional race based on one overwhelming element: Sympathy over the murder of her husband, Dennis, and the injury of her son, Kevin, in the brutal Long Island Railroad massacre.

Brutal it was, and Ms. McCarthy has been a powerful spokeswoman for the bottled anguish felt by the survivors, and the helplessness felt by observers bombarded almost daily by one horrific news report after another. How can anybody not cringe when they hear of Colin Ferguson arising from his seat in the cramped confines of a commuter train, producing a loaded weapon, and embarking on a murderous spree up and down the aisles of the train. We’ve all ridden on trains; we can all visualize the frantic scramble for escape. And we can all sympathize with the survivors in mourning black as they put their loved ones to rest.

We can even understand Ms. McCarthy’s reaction: A sincere desire that no lunatic should ever again have access to the means to visit the grief she felt upon another family. Nobody should ever be put into that situation again.

But they will be. That’s a horrible, but unavoidable, fact of life. Evil does exist, twisted individuals walk among us, and no amount of legislative wishful thinking can eliminate future tragedy. Colin Fergusons of the future skulk among us now, ready to someday turn against their neighbors with pistol, or machete, or home-brewed mayhem of one sort or another. As Ms. McCarthy embarks upon her congressional term, she does so with the intent to uphold old gun control laws and enforce new ones that can only create new Carolyn McCarthys. For such laws will have an impact only upon those who dutifully obey. In surrendering their weapons, and thus their ability to defend themselves, those who submit to such laws put themselves at the mercy of forces beyond their control. The Colin Fergusons of the world don’t adhere to gun control laws, and with their chosen instruments of destruction they find unarmed, ready prey.

Some good people, of course, choose not to disarm. Laws or no laws, they shudder at the prospect of surrendering their personal defense to unknown others. Rather than become targets-in-waiting, they slip a bit of insurance into their pockets and hope that today isn’t the day that they become victim to impractical laws passed by unrealistic politicians.

Because that’s what it comes down to: Do we surrender our safety to the uncertain abilities of the state, tugging at its skirts forever like frightened children and pretending that its instruments will always be there for our protection? Or do we as adults take responsibility for our own lives and remember that the world around us has, and has always had, an element of danger from which no law or police officer can shield us?