Oregon mourns as its residents try to make sense of a heinous crime, committed within the confines of a shopping mall. While they are still reeling under the shock of it, 26 people, mostly young children have been killed in another act of utter insanity by a gunman in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Blossoms nipped in the bud, senselessly and cruelly deprived of their right to live, the right to grow, the right to be. 

Can we all please stop for a moment and think? Is this the price of freedom that we want? Have we lost all rationality? Have we gone mad? I don't have answers. At least, not THE answer. I hope that some of you do. I hope that we can live without fear some day. Someday, when our children don't get shot and killed simply because they did the right thing by going to school. Someday, when we understand that true freedom sets us free, and that it doesn't hold us to ransom at the hands of madness. We have a right to live that kind of life. A right we still don't have. A right no government can guarantee us.