So, I know we are all really shocked that yet another deadly school shooting has occurred. The thoughts and prayers from legislators on the NRA’s dole didn’t work, and the outrage expressed by so many of us was ignored. So, the cycle begins again.
There are the usual arguments. Guns don’t kill people. A person could use a knife instead. It’s a mental health issue. It’s all the violence in movies, video games, and music. Criminals won’t obey laws anyway.
The list is kind of ridiculous.
The problem of gun violence is multi-faceted. There is no one solution. Sadly, one of the organizations within our government designed to look at problems like disease, injuries, etc. isn’t even allowed to study the problem. The Centers for Disease Control has been very strongly discouraged from investigating the issue of gun violence in America. The exact amount of money typically spent on such research was removed from their budget—likely because the NRA, and those purchased by the NRA wouldn’t benefit from the results.
As Americans, regardless of how we align ourselves, we should all be outraged by this cowardice and greed.
I read a great blog the other day about toxic masculinity being a factor in gun culture, and the gun violence issue. I think that certainly carries a lot of weight. Sadly, I do believe there are plenty of gun-owning men for whom a military style weapon is a penis extension. While not all men carrying this kind of chip on their shoulders also play out the fantasy of shooting up those who have “done them wrong,” that tiny fraction certainly commands our attention.
Today, I read another blog, which proposed the notion that one of the solutions is connecting with those who seem most at risk. In other words, we should all be doing a better job of looking out for one another, and we should be trying to reach out to those loners at work, at school, and in our communities. I think there’s some value to that idea, mainly because it’s just the right thing to do. But I can tell you that those “loner” kids who seemed a little off would have been exactly the kids my parents would have instructed me to steer clear of growing up.
My husband and I actually talked about these classmates we remember from high school who were always on the fringes. At my school, they were usually the kids that would hang out in the parking lot and smoke before school, and at lunch. They were often unkempt in some manner, and they seemed potentially “dangerous.” And yet, there was never a shooting at my high school. I am not even sure, almost thirty years later, that there has even been a threat.
So, what’s different? I don’t know. I suppose there are a lot of things. More moms work than before. The world doesn’t feel as safe as it once did, and our kids often don’t have friends right in their neighborhood. We utilize a lot of electronics to both entertain our kids, and take the place of real human to human interaction. As our kids become older and more independently savvy with these devices and avenues for utilizing them, we have even less connection to the choices they are making, and the interactions that become meaningful to them in the absence of friends and close ties.
It doesn’t look likely that Pandora is going back in the box.
But aside from the incredible changes in family structures, responsibilities, and interactions, something else has happened. Darkness and violence are filling voids for some of us. Our culture has made a dangerous shift. In high school, I didn’t talk to the kids on the fringes. I was on the fringes myself, and I had problems of my own. But for whatever reason, there wasn’t a culture of “revenge.” We didn’t hold it so against people who ignored us or made us feel “less than” that we felt it was appropriate to take away their lives.
I don’t know why that changed, but it very clearly has.
When you look at mental illnesses and issues of brain development, there are a lot of things that have changed. There are more kids on medication to control attention deficit issues. More children are being diagnosed with issues associated with the autism spectrum. And just like the chicken and the egg, it’s hard to know what the catalyst has been. Do we make these diagnoses more often because we are better at identifying them, are we actually seeing more of these cases and trends, or is it simply easier to attach a label to someone and continue to be detached from them simply because it’s their problem, not ours?
I don’t know the answer to that either.
But I do know some other things.
When there is an outbreak of e-coli related illnesses and deaths, the bagged salad believed to be its source gets pulled from the shelf until the issue can be resolved. There’s nothing inherently dangerous about a bag of chopped greens, but we have the common sense to understand that since a handful of people have gotten really sick, or even died from eating it that we need to take a pause and address the issue before we sell more.
I know that restaurants get inspected on a periodic basis for health code violations—even if no patron has reported an issue. We have that safety mechanism in place to prevent illness, and make sure people who own and run restaurants are following basic safety guidelines and the law. And this happens whether someone reports a problem or not.
I remember as a kid hearing about certain brands of tampons being pulled off the shelves because they were associated with an increased risk of causing toxic shock syndrome, which can be fatal. The convenience of being able to only change a tampon twice a day was literally causing women to become very sick, and some died. Tampons are not inherently dangerous. And even though several brands and types are no longer available because of their risk to safety, you can still find dozens of alternative options on the shelves of feminine hygiene aisles today.
There’s nothing wrong with saying “We have a problem with certain types of guns,” because you don’t have to be a scientist with the CDC, a gun manufacturer, a shooting survivor, or a Congressman to see that we DO. And like any other problem, our problem with guns can’t be solved while we are stuck in triage mode, and defending the bloody ground beneath our feet.
Is the threat of simply taking a step back—a pause on the situation—too high a price to pay to save someone’s child? If it is, then we already have the answer—just like the kids who were lucky enough to escape with their lives last week, but will be haunted every day of them because we couldn’t face the truth, and actually do the one thing we know we should do.
Those kids know the answer. Most are too young to vote, but they’ve stood up at a time most of us would want to fall and crumble, and they have asked us to do what we should have done before 26 first graders and teachers lost their lives five years ago, before more than 50 people died at a concert in Las Vegas, and before the next group of kids gets shot down while going to English class.
When our Constitution was amended to include the right to bear arms, our founding fathers left us with a responsibility. They gave us a freedom—a right—but with freedom—with a right—comes great responsibility. Prior to the writing of our Constitution, many of these same men were instrumental in declaring our independence. Among the things they believe us all to be entitled to—first and foremost—is life. Some of us throw that word around a lot, and define it to suit our own professed moral constructs. Some of us concern ourselves strictly with what happens before we come out of a woman’s vagina or stomach. But many of us believe that life doesn’t end at birth.
Guns are inherently dangerous. If every life is as precious as we want to say it is, then why can we not agree to simply hit pause? Why can’t we agree to look at the problem with the same common sense we give bagged salad, restaurant inspections and tampons?
