Hi All,

Been a while since I last posted here, but I always am lurking!

I live about 20 miles away from Newtown, and we catered a party directly across the street from the Firehouse on Labor Day. I recognized the location instantly. It turns out that my wife knew one of the mothers who lost a child. The whole situation is surreal. Newtown is such a great town. It is not really "New Yorkified" like Stamford and Greenwich, but yet it does not have a hard core New England feel either. It always felt to me like what a nice, small town, middle-of-America place should feel like----a wonderful place to raise a family.

I'm a retired NYC cop. I have several handguns. At some point, I stopped carrying them when I was not working. To be honest, I got tired of safeguarding them, and if you know me, I am probably not the person the average dirtbag would look to mess with. I have a pretty thorny exterior (but a soft-white underbelly, lol). I don't usually get accosted.

For a minute, after the events, I considered carrying a gun again. I quickly dismissed the idea though. When you get right down to it, my choice is to take my chances with humanity. I believe in God, and I think that when it is my time to go, I am going, gun or no.

Having said that, I DO NOT begrudge any person who can legally own or carry a gun to do so. The way this world is going, how could you blame someone from taking steps they feel are necessary to protect themselves. Let me tell you plainly-----if you put your faith in the government to keep you protected, you are kidding yourself. They can't. Do I really need to convince you?

And it is NOT just about guns, although we DO NOT need 20-30 clip Glocks and .223 Bushmasters. It is about us, and our culture. One of the last events I handled as a Sergeant was the "Happy Land" fire in the Bronx in 1990. Go google it if you are not familiar with it. Some scrawny little piece of crap would not take "get lost" as an answer from his girlfriend. He got a plastic milk jug and a buck's worth of gas and set fire to the club where she worked as a coat-check girl. He killed 87 people. No gun. I remember seeing bloody fingernails embedded in sheet rock from poor souls trying to claw thru the walls trying to get out.

Somewhere along the line, we put self before others, gain before service, and vice before God. THAT my friends, is what is wrong with us. We don't care for our neighbor anymore, heck many of us don't even KNOW our neighbors, forget about whether or not someone could have possibly stepped in at some point to try and help the shooter. It has become so ingrained in us NOT to butt in anymore, to respect another's right to let them do as they wish. To tolerate what we know in our hearts to be dangerous.

It is all a tragic, sad mess. Until we find our souls again, and learn to truly know and care for our neighbors, I can't see it getting better. Personally, I am going to resolve from this day forth to speak up and DO SOMETHING when my internal radar says "hey, that person needs HELP", even if that means calling the police and causing friction.

May all those innocent little souls rest in peace, and do their memory justice by resolving yourself to do more to get this mess straightened out.