Literary sources confirm the Carthaginian belief in child sacrifice. The Roman historian Diodorus wrote, “There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus, extending its hands, palms up and sloping towards the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire.” Diodorus also alleged that some elite members of society actually purchased children from poor people and then reared them specifically for sacrifice. The burned remains of the children, often intermingled with those of animals who were also sacrificed with them, were then buried beneath tombstones expressing gratitude and thanks to the gods whose favor was now assured.

Americans have this in common with the Carthaginians. Year after year, the United States sacrifices children at the altar of gun rights. Since the Columbine shootings in 1999, at least 185 people have been killed in school violence, according to the Washington Post—the great majority of them children and teenagers. The Post’s database shows that more than three hundred eleven thousand children have now witnessed gun violence in schools. And school shootings are just a fraction of the death toll: already this year, 142 children (eleven and younger) and 515 teens have been killed by gunshots, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Tallying GVA reports from these last four years, more than four thousand children and teens have been shot and killed.

The Carthaginians believed that the good fortunes of their society or of wealthy individuals could only be maintained if these babies were sacrificed, pure and whole to their exacting gods. The good of many was thus assured by the annihilation of the weakest, the most vulnerable, the most worthy of protection. The same calculation is at play in post-millennial America. The unfettered freedom to carry assault weapons, American society has deemed, is so necessary and so important that sacrificing ten, twenty, or thirty children a year is a good bargain. The Carthaginian children that were rolled into a burning pit of fire were chosen and marked for sacrifice. In the United States, the killings are random—no one knows which children in which unassuming school will confront a killer. No one knows how many children exactly will die. The only certainty is that they will die and that no one will do anything about it.

On American blood sacrifice.