People’s hearts are indeed broken when a tragedy such as the shootings at the Newtown Elementary School happen. The reach of it, and other slayings that preceded it this year, can hardly be borne. And I wonder, where will evil’s next stop be? How more deeply horrific can these events become?

Evil never sleeps. Most of the major religions have a name for it — the devil, satan — who the Bible says “goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he can devour.”

It was an assault-type rifle, a devouring instrument, that was used in the slayings by that troubled young man in Connecticut.

“I don’t understand why people have to have these killing machines,” said one grieving mother on the evening news. It is the anguished, piercing question heard after so many calamities. Yet, horrifically, that assault weapon was legally owned by the mother of the assailant.

Evil’s commitment to destroy what it will, with the greatest ease possible, should not be supported or tolerated in a sane society. Enablers of that ease (the NRA and its ready apologists in Congress) need, right now, to look into their souls to see what mirrored image it presents to them, when the innocent faces of those 20 children are considered in their final moments, and moments afterward.

Will they be able, once again, to assert, without shame, that renewing this country’s ban on assault-style rifles is a reprehensible idea whose time is not come, nor should it ever?

Paul Baribault, Lewiston

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