This was the year of the war against children. I live not that far from Newtown, Connecticut, so the small-town scenery of our freshest butchery, executed by someone who was himself not much beyond childhood years, is my back yard: picket fences, intensively tended lawns, a plethora of churches and those schools with their locker-lined polished corridors and the smell of cafeteria pizza. Since Columbine we have wearily come to expect that when carnage erupts, it will do so in the habitat of American domesticity – a shopping mall, a movie theatre, a college and, over and over again, a school. If you live outside the US and do not belong to a nation where there are more guns than people, you may just shrug this off as a peculiarly American blight.
2012年是對兒童們開戰的一年。我住的地方離康乃迪克州的紐敦市不太遠，因此這個剛剛發生血案——行兇者本人也才成年不久——的小城的種種場景對我來說就像我家後院：尖樁籬柵、細心照料的草坪、遍地的教堂，還有那些在擦得光亮的走廊兩邊擺滿儲物櫃、樓道里充斥著自助食堂比薩餅味的中小學。自科倫拜(Columbine)慘案以來，我們對於發生在美國各種日常生活場所——商場、影院、大學尤其是中小學校——的屠殺已經見怪不怪了。如果你居住在美國以外，而你的國家又不像美國這樣槍枝比人口還多，你也許會把這個問題當成是獨特的美國病而置之不理。