Newtown Gun Control Advocacy

The Connecticut State Legislature has passed and the governor has signed a new gun control bill designed to ensure that the Newtown massacre can never happen again.

To promote the gun control cause 60 Minutes is going to air interviews with the parents of the slain children. These parents will be stating, to an absolute certainty, that if Adam Lanza had not had access to magazines that held thirty bullets he would not have killed as many children.

In the time it would have taken him to reload ten-bullet magazines some of the children would have been able to run away.

It’s a counterfactual like another.

But, let’s try another counterfactual. Before the Newtown massacre the Connecticut State Legislature voted down legislation that would have made it easier to commit people like Adam Lanza to psychiatric institutions against their will. If they had voted for the bill and if the governor had signed it, Adam Lanza’s mother would have been able to have him committed.

If the Connecticut State Legislature had done its job, Adam Lanza would have been receiving psychiatric treatment and all of the slain women and children of Newtown would still be alive.

It’s another counterfactual, one that you will probably not hear on 60 Minutes.