It was the one fixed point on a vacillating compass of relative morality until, one day, a tiny bird, the merest wisp of red plumage, tore away my comforting absolute and aligned me squarely with the NRA supporters, Second Amendment defenders and pro-gun crusaders I had reviled.

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He regretfully tore himself away from them and they from him.

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So, seven months ago Jamila tore herself away from her family and took a job at a hospital in Brooklyn, New York, in an effort to change her luck.

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And predictably, when the bundles fell out of the sky, the Kurds tore them open and threw away the blankets.

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And an Amish community in Pennsylvania tore down the West Nickel Mines Amish School and built a new school a few hundred yards away after a gunman killed five girls there in 2006.

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