In the Dec. 17 Yahoo! news site there was a video of President Obama attending a religious service for the children and staff who died in the Sandy Hook School shooting. Obama had also publicly offered a Christian biblical quotation in response to the tragedy. This itself is government endorsement of a particular religion and therefore a violation of separation and state, but that's another matter for another time.
More to the point, the time has come for the country to act not by indulging in the passivity of worship every time there's a mass murder. Prayer is useless under any conditions, and especially at a time like this. The victims are dead and there's no supreme being who will bring them back to life any more than there was one to protect them from being murdered in the first place. Instead it's time for America to take action and once and for all face down the rabidly extremist National Rifle Association by finally instituting meaningful gun control legislation at the federal level.
So far Obama has made the usual presidential noises about this horrific tragedy, but has not specifically committed to advocating gun control. On the other hand, Senator Diane Feinstein has promised to propose such a bill, but it remains to be seen how much support she will get, especially from Obama and how far she will pursue the measure. BTW note that the NRA which thrives on intimidation against its opponents showed its cowardly stripes following the massacre by shutting down its Facebook page due to its being on the receiving end widespread criticism.
Also note that the more civilized countries in the Western world have stricter gun laws, much less gun violence, and at the same time a much larger percentage of atheists among their citizenry than in the U.S. As long as America's answer to mass murders like at Sandy Hook is God and more assault weapons (a ban on which expired in 2004 and thanks to the NRA-gun nuts was never reinstated), you can bet the carnage will never stop. It will only get worse.
