by Tom Pantera
Columnist

By the time you read this, the world will have moved on from Newtown, Conn. The dead will be buried, the news circus will pack up and leave town and we’ll be back to our personal concerns.

Maybe.

This time, for some reason, there are differences.

Of course, a lot of things are the same as every other time there’s been a massacre like this (and how odd is that, using the phrase “every other time there’s been a massacre like this?”). There’s way too much speculation about the people involved and the gun fanciers are out in full force, buying firearms as though the jackboots would be pounding down their street the next day.

But it appears for whatever reason; there might be some differences this time that will provide a little room for change.

One can only speculate (there’s that word) about why it’s different. That the victims were children of a particularly poignant age, and that they were shot in a place where they should have been safe – and that apparently did everything possible to ensure that safety – has scared people. Every single one of us with children personalized the disaster in a way that rarely happens. The Aurora theater shootings were particularly creepy for me, because my older son and his wife are exactly the kind of people who would have been in that theater, but the Newtown massacre scared me in a way that even that earlier disaster didn’t.

This is going to be a moment that will rank with 9/11 in how it changes this country.

In the first place, people are finally starting to realize that it is incumbent on those who want to see America become an armed camp to defend their position. One of the most frustrating things about being pro-gun control is that the gun fanciers rarely, if ever, address our arguments. If you say gun sales, much less gun ownership, should be restricted, the other side just starts screaming “Second Amendment,” using their misreading of it as some sort of talisman to cut off discussion.

Well, that isn’t going to cut it this time. Screaming “Second Amendment” just isn’t going to explain why 6-year-olds were in a situation where they had to stop as many as 11 bullets. We have finally paid the price for somebody’s Rambo fantasies.

And those fantasies are being exposed as just that. I’ve been grimly amused by those who have said that had there been a gun in the school that day somebody could have stopped Adam Lanza. That’s because they’re imagining themselves as the kind of kick-ass-and-take-names person they are in their wildest, most fearful fantasies. What they don’t get is that even had they, or anyone else with a gun, been there, they would have confronted the most dangerous kind of person. Lanza had nothing to lose. He was without fear. Even the most die-hard gun nut doesn’t realize that he would have acted as any other human being, with terror, and that terror would have given Lanza the edge.

In his great book on the Hell’s Angels, Hunter S. Thompson made the point that a karate black belt who’d never been in a real fight would be at a disadvantage against a bartender with scar tissue all over his knuckles, because the person who would win such a fight is the one who had been in the situation before. The rookie would be fighting not just his opponent, but his own fear and unaccustomed physical pain. That’s analogous to getting into a gunfight with someone who isn’t afraid to die.

The other difference is that people are finally standing up to the NRA, which was conspicuous in its silence in the days following the shootings. The organization didn’t even have the courage and grace to extend sympathy to Newtown. Again, by the time you read this that probably will have changed, but it’s been pretty revealing all the same. And there’s been some welcome examination of just what the NRA is: a lobby for gun manufacturers. Unfortunately, they know how to play on the public’s fears and people respond to that. But this is going to force the NRA to explain itself with something other than appeals to the Constitution.

And it’s going to force us to confront something that is as old as America. We at last will have to have a discussion about how we balance individual rights against the greater good. It’s a horrible thing that we will only have that discussion over the bodies of 20 dead children and seven dead adults, but if that’s what it takes, it’s happened. It has become other than an abstract question. This is as bad as it gets and it’s plenty bad.

Of course, what comes out of this in a practical sense is the most important thing. If I had to bet, I’d say that the assault weapons ban will be put back in place and large magazines will be restricted. Maybe the gun show loopholes will be closed, but I think that’s unlikely; the people who make and sell guns spread just too much money around Congress for that to be a realistic possibility. Then again, maybe logic will for once win out. It is the season of miracles, after all.

In academese, it’s called a “paradigm shift.” The Newtown massacre has challenged some very basic assumptions we have about reality. Nothing this bad has ever happened before; we have been confronted, in a stark and horrible way, with the consequences of some peoples’ beliefs and of our past inaction. There’s a new reality out there that must be addressed with something other than abstract arguments and paranoia.

It’s time to start dealing with it.