WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?

BUT FIRST, THESE ITEMS

    Television news producers called it a false lead-that headline in yellow gold above, a case in point. Get your attention with it, but do another story or two first.  Sometimes because the headline story wasn't ready, perhaps a technical issue, or simply to make you wait through earlier info.

     HISTORY TELLS US THIS IS A GREAT DAY

  This photo and an accompanying letter has been passed down through our family since the 1940's.  More than once it was a topic of a school essay or report.

    Orville Wright, who with his brother Wilbur created the age of air travel, is a cousin. It was on this day at Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina the Ohio brothers alternated flying for the first time, as captured in the photo.  Orville's letter of May 2, 1945, to a relative genealogist verified her research that our family lines joined with Edmund Freeman, born in 1590 in England.  He came to Boston in 1635. His research and hers were consistent. The Freemans, Booths and Jones-part of the English line were my father's mother's lineage.

     I remember the night my father and I drove to cousin Rhea's home to see her massive genealogical charts and I can still remember her great excitement at making the Wright Brothers connection, some ten years prior to our visit.  It was a big deal in the family.  

DICKEN'S BIG HIT

    The Charles Dicken's classic A Christmas Carol made its first appearance on this day in 1843.  I loved it from the first telling by an English uncle and in my later first reading from an old English illustrated copy.  I've seen it staged more times than I can remember and assume by now it has become part of my bones.
     The best Scrooge I've seen, and in fact some of the best staging ever, was the Tom Haas adaptation performed for years at the IRT in Indianapolis.  I'm drawing a blank, if you can remember the fine Rep actor who played Scrooge several times at IRT, let me know, please.  

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?

    That was the best question to come from the hours of coverage and reportage on the Newtown tragedy. America has been through this too many times.  As always we resolve to something.  We do nothing and politics always intrudes.
      As I have posted previously I've covered this sort of violence and wrote and directed a documentary which dealt with the topic.
     I am a firm advocate of the Bill of Rights, but I wonder if there isn't some way to develop a standard that closely approximates the type of fire arm the writers of the Second Amendment would approve.  
    I think a good case is made the Second is focused on the right of people to keep and bear arms only as a means to organize a regulated militia for their defense. It is not about keeping specific firepower.
   Clearly the firearms of 1791 were less sophisticated, but couldn't there be a way to equate what was available and in use in those days, and bring the standard forward to include modern technology, but draw the line some place? If self defense is an operating principle then some of the weapons available today clearly go beyond that.  Automatic weapons are meant to kill, rapidly, efficiently.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is a fool and or apologist.  Assault rifles are meant to be used as tools of war and to kill.  
    I wonder what James Madison, George Mason, Patrick Henry and Alexander Hamilton would think.  How would those writers of the Second Amendment react to Newtown, or Aurora, or Columbine, or etc, etc, etc.?
    Can't we find a way to define classes of weapons, or ways to categorize what is consistent with being able to mount a militia?  Though I confess those who are overly obsessed with being able to create a militia seem a little shaky themselves.
    I don't profess an answer, but the question needs to be
answered.  What are we going to do about it?

See you down the trail.