The terrible shooting deaths at an elementary school in Connecticut have been much in the news the last few days, and almost everyone has weighed in with an opinion about how to stop such awful carnage. Personally, I am nearly in despair about the bloodshed and the deaths of little children, and have hesitated to say anything about it myself because the bitterness and cynicism I am feeling would shock my family and friends, possibly including me.
Some time ago, in another post, I mentioned that the first funeral I ever attended was for a kindergarten boy who had shot himself to death with his father's gun, carelessly left in a dresser drawer. It happened just about this time of year, and I recall Sister John commenting to us about how sad that family would be on Christmas day without their child. Multiply that by all the devastated families in Newtown, and Aurora, and in Wisconsin, and I can't even remember the other places where there has been horrible violence committed with firearms.
Everyone seems to have an opinion concerning why this happens in America, and why it doesn't happen so often in other places. Reactions vary across a spectrum. I saw a Facebook comment that said, "Fuck the Constitution. Twenty children are dead!" Another writer, using mostly capital letters, insisted "Gun control doesn't work and is not the answer!" Still others note the presumed autism of the murderer and claim that better public mental health care would have prevented the tragedy.
Pushing other agendas, there have been comments that banning prayer in public schools is responsible for these mass shootings, or that the deaths of inoffensive children is somehow God's judgement on America for allowing gay people to marry. The nincompoops of the Westboro Kansas Baptist Church plan to picket funerals to argue that point.
The sad fact is that although we will fulminate about these deaths and accuse each other of all kinds of base motives, nothing will change and there will be another massacre next year that will prompt more finger pointing and recriminations and the same the same horror will play out time after time until we are all under ground. (There. Is that bitter and cynical enough for everyone?)
I can't write any more about this and will have to wait a day or two before deciding whether to post it.
Pete, it's how you feel and that is a big part of what blogging is all about, so I think it is a good thing you wrote it and posted it. The part you wrote that I MOST agree about is that "The nincompoops of the Westboro Kansas Baptist Church plan to picket funerals to argue that point". That group is SO out-of-touch with God and out-of-touch with reality as to make any sane person despair! Listen, this tragedy actually got me to feel very positive about President Obama, and, well, I guess that's a plus. I know the country is very polarized and I know that nothing MAY change, but I think decent people should still do all they can to try to make a positive difference. Incidentally, a relative of one of my coworkers is married to the one teacher at the school who was shot and survived. The woman was shot 4 times and lived. That connection really "brought this home" to me.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how much this will add to your cynicism, or whether that's a good thing, but the WBC protests are, nauseatingly, a business strategy. Fred Phelps' daughters are lawyers and have a law firm attached to the church, for which the church is their only client. They seek out the most emotionally fraught situations, make a nuisance of themselves, inevitably get struck back against, either physically or with what is technically a harassing legal action, and then sue their victim.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what else to say except, to paraphrase both you and Grandpa (and oh, I say this a lot myself): tragedies happen, but tragedies do not repeatedly happen to careful people. Nancy Lanza was clearly not adequately careful, and a lot of innocent people suffered for it. But also, we haven't been careful, we have let tragedy after tragedy happen and done nothing about it. I don't know how to even begin to express my contempt for the judgment of people like Joe Scarborough, who said yesterday that his opinion about gun control had changed because of Newtown. The risks were always there, it was his job to investigate and evaluate them, they didn't change on Friday, they were only fulfilled. If he didn't think that the this was an acceptable situation he should have said something before these kids were killed, not after, and if he doesn't have the judgment to be Prime Minister, he should stick to being the Mayor of Birmingham; we would all be better for it.