Less Amish
The murder of five Amish schoolgirls one year ago taught the nation that no one is safe.
By Jonathan Zimmerman
October 2, 2007
Today, many of us will pause to remember the five Amish girls who were murdered a year ago at a one-room schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pa. Television crews will return to the community and dutifully record Amish children walking to their new one-room school, which looks a lot like the one torn down days after the attack.
But the new building has a steel door that locks from the inside. And that makes all the difference.
School shootings are etched onto our collective psyche, each name signifying another moment of unspeakable horror. Littleton, Colo. Jonesboro, Ark. Springfield, Ore. And most recently, of course, Virginia Tech.
But Nickel Mines was different because of its victims. For nearly a century, the Amish have symbolized simple rural living and the security that came with it. When Charles Carl Roberts took those Amish girls' lives, he took away this feeling. The new Amish school represents our effort to reclaim it, to return to an era before such mass murder. But the steel door reminds us that we can't.
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<
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-zimmerman2oct02,0,325577.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail>America's weak gun laws are nothing less than terrorism.