Last week, sadly, we had yet another school shooting. I have reached the point, honestly, where I can't even mentally participate in what then ensues. The sadness, the thoughts and prayers, the excuses, the breast-beating, the anti-gun side, the pro-gun side, the shouting, virtual and otherwise--and the funerals, the sadness, the mourning. I know all about Australia, and honestly, you'd have to be living under a rock not to, and I know about England, and Switzerland, and I know about the other places that do have guns and how awful and lawless they are. I've thought about it all, I've been down those roads a million times.
Newtown happened in my home state. The teachers who were killed went to the same state schools as my own daughters, so I even have a fair idea of what their college days were like. My heart broke for the little ones. My heart even broke for the killer's family, because they lost two family members as well, no matter how culpable his mother may have been.
All of them. But you know what, right around Las Vegas, I started losing interest, or the will to have interest. Why was this, you ask? Well, this probably makes me a really terrible person (no probably) but those innocent concert-goers were country music fans. I think there is no getting around the fact that there is probably a high correlation between following country music and believing that the 2nd amendment gives you the inherent right to possess your very own arsenal. (I also think it wasn't always this way, I think back in the olden days when people owned a handgun either for protection or target practice and then a rifle or a shotgun or both for hunting, and you listened to Johnny Cash, the two were not inextricably entwined). So....a lot of people got mowed down by someone who was exercising the precise rights they believed in. Huh. How could that possibly have happened? Things were carried to their logical conclusion, and I was done.
Then last week...high school. Bad young man gunman. Slightly crazy look in his eyes, assault weapon. 17 dead. Thoughts and prayers, and it's too soon. But Australia! I honestly couldn't listen. But then something started happening, something that didn't happen before.
In Newtown, the victims were largely little kids. Their parents spoke (and spoke and spoke and continue to speak) but they were little kids without their own voices and everyone knows that parents grieve, so, well, so.... I don't know this for sure, but the Orlando shooting was perpetrated largely on a community that is still considered marginal (it is, stop pretending) and so the survivors might have been a little less likely to speak out on their own behalf, and, sadly, there might have been fewer people willing to speak out for them. Las Vegas? Well, I might not have been the first person to notice that there were probably a lot of 2nd amendment types in the crowd and among the victims, and, well, if you don't believe in gun control and someone you love gets mowed down because of no gun control, if you are not a complete hypocrite (or don't want to get mowed down yourself by you gun-loving cousin who everyone knows isn't too tightly wrapped) you keep quiet. For so many people dying at that one, there was remarkably little outrage.
But this one. This one. It was high school students. It was the latest in a long line that began back with Columbine. It was young adults, young people who know they have voices. They were and are not afraid to use them. They are loud, they are insistent. They are versed in social media and they are using it. They saw their friends murdered and they have the means and the will to make it known that they are furious, and they want change and they're going to see that happen. They are a force.
And this one isn't going away as quickly. By now we would have had the presidential visit (which we did and what a joke that was) and the funeral would have started and the scholarship funds started and whatever else is the thing you do when this happens. And those things are happening, I'm sure, because you have to bury the dead, and everyone wants to memorialize them, but those students are not being quiet. And other students are not being quiet. Parents are not being quiet. Teachers are not being quiet.
I have as bad a "It can't happen to me" attitude as anyone else, but it dawned on me that one of my daughters works in mental health, and boy, she's right on the front lines with the crazies. I have been to her workplace and yes, there are safeguards in place, but I don't think that nice lady at the front desk would be much of an impediment, and I also don't think she should have to be and I certainly don't think she should be packing.
But these kids have seen it happen to them and they are furious, they are enraged, and they never want it to happen to anyone else, ever, ever again, and they are going to talk, and post, and tweet, and share and do whatever else you do now, for as long as it takes. They will use old tactics, too--they will walk out of school, they will strike, they will boycott, and they WILL NOT SHUT UP. They will call Trump out on his lies and deceit and they will call Congress out on their do-nothing, let us all get killed policies, and they show no signs of stopping. Because...who is more passionate than a teenager with a cause? They literally have nothing else to think about. They don't have bills to pay, dinner to make, or many responsibilities. They are the ideal demographic to have mobilized. They are also VERY SOON going to be of voting age.
I have dragged this out so many times I can't even say it any more, but I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, around guns. My father had guns. We had a pistol, a shotgun, a couple of rifles. We ate venison. There was target practice in the back yard. (We lived on 5 acres that backed onto state land, so there was no one to bother). I have often said that I would pay for the sights and sounds of my father cleaning his guns, just one more time. It was part of life. You know what else was part of life? Having a deeply, deeply ingrained respect for guns. When I was 4 or 5, my father started with, "Never point a gun at another person, not even a toy gun," and he never let me do that. Not even a toy gun. And you know...I feel like that's the only thing you really ever need. The rest is gravy, honestly. If you're not pointing guns at other people, you're not shooting them. You have respect for guns.
I am a very intermittent blogger and I never get any comments, but I expect if I tag this properly, I will. I even expect I will get hostile comments. This is because I think that we need to stop screwing around here. The country is going down the toilet. We have so much stuff we need to clean up that this is the tip of the iceberg. We need gun control. No one wants your guns, for God's sake (and let me just say here that if Obama was coming for your guns, he did a piss-poor job of it). We just want a modicum of safety for our children, and ourselves...at school, at churches, synagogues AND mosques, at concerts, at clubs. I wouldn't mind if we were a little better regarded in the rest of the world again, but let's start at home. Let's not have school days be cloudy, with a 25% chance of a massacre. Let's have that not be our reality.
Listen to the teenagers. You already let them fix your smartphones, your computers, your tablets. Let them fix your country, too, because they seem to know how to do it better than you do.
Newtown happened in my home state. The teachers who were killed went to the same state schools as my own daughters, so I even have a fair idea of what their college days were like. My heart broke for the little ones. My heart even broke for the killer's family, because they lost two family members as well, no matter how culpable his mother may have been.
All of them. But you know what, right around Las Vegas, I started losing interest, or the will to have interest. Why was this, you ask? Well, this probably makes me a really terrible person (no probably) but those innocent concert-goers were country music fans. I think there is no getting around the fact that there is probably a high correlation between following country music and believing that the 2nd amendment gives you the inherent right to possess your very own arsenal. (I also think it wasn't always this way, I think back in the olden days when people owned a handgun either for protection or target practice and then a rifle or a shotgun or both for hunting, and you listened to Johnny Cash, the two were not inextricably entwined). So....a lot of people got mowed down by someone who was exercising the precise rights they believed in. Huh. How could that possibly have happened? Things were carried to their logical conclusion, and I was done.
Then last week...high school. Bad young man gunman. Slightly crazy look in his eyes, assault weapon. 17 dead. Thoughts and prayers, and it's too soon. But Australia! I honestly couldn't listen. But then something started happening, something that didn't happen before.
In Newtown, the victims were largely little kids. Their parents spoke (and spoke and spoke and continue to speak) but they were little kids without their own voices and everyone knows that parents grieve, so, well, so.... I don't know this for sure, but the Orlando shooting was perpetrated largely on a community that is still considered marginal (it is, stop pretending) and so the survivors might have been a little less likely to speak out on their own behalf, and, sadly, there might have been fewer people willing to speak out for them. Las Vegas? Well, I might not have been the first person to notice that there were probably a lot of 2nd amendment types in the crowd and among the victims, and, well, if you don't believe in gun control and someone you love gets mowed down because of no gun control, if you are not a complete hypocrite (or don't want to get mowed down yourself by you gun-loving cousin who everyone knows isn't too tightly wrapped) you keep quiet. For so many people dying at that one, there was remarkably little outrage.
But this one. This one. It was high school students. It was the latest in a long line that began back with Columbine. It was young adults, young people who know they have voices. They were and are not afraid to use them. They are loud, they are insistent. They are versed in social media and they are using it. They saw their friends murdered and they have the means and the will to make it known that they are furious, and they want change and they're going to see that happen. They are a force.
And this one isn't going away as quickly. By now we would have had the presidential visit (which we did and what a joke that was) and the funeral would have started and the scholarship funds started and whatever else is the thing you do when this happens. And those things are happening, I'm sure, because you have to bury the dead, and everyone wants to memorialize them, but those students are not being quiet. And other students are not being quiet. Parents are not being quiet. Teachers are not being quiet.
I have as bad a "It can't happen to me" attitude as anyone else, but it dawned on me that one of my daughters works in mental health, and boy, she's right on the front lines with the crazies. I have been to her workplace and yes, there are safeguards in place, but I don't think that nice lady at the front desk would be much of an impediment, and I also don't think she should have to be and I certainly don't think she should be packing.
But these kids have seen it happen to them and they are furious, they are enraged, and they never want it to happen to anyone else, ever, ever again, and they are going to talk, and post, and tweet, and share and do whatever else you do now, for as long as it takes. They will use old tactics, too--they will walk out of school, they will strike, they will boycott, and they WILL NOT SHUT UP. They will call Trump out on his lies and deceit and they will call Congress out on their do-nothing, let us all get killed policies, and they show no signs of stopping. Because...who is more passionate than a teenager with a cause? They literally have nothing else to think about. They don't have bills to pay, dinner to make, or many responsibilities. They are the ideal demographic to have mobilized. They are also VERY SOON going to be of voting age.
I have dragged this out so many times I can't even say it any more, but I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, around guns. My father had guns. We had a pistol, a shotgun, a couple of rifles. We ate venison. There was target practice in the back yard. (We lived on 5 acres that backed onto state land, so there was no one to bother). I have often said that I would pay for the sights and sounds of my father cleaning his guns, just one more time. It was part of life. You know what else was part of life? Having a deeply, deeply ingrained respect for guns. When I was 4 or 5, my father started with, "Never point a gun at another person, not even a toy gun," and he never let me do that. Not even a toy gun. And you know...I feel like that's the only thing you really ever need. The rest is gravy, honestly. If you're not pointing guns at other people, you're not shooting them. You have respect for guns.
I am a very intermittent blogger and I never get any comments, but I expect if I tag this properly, I will. I even expect I will get hostile comments. This is because I think that we need to stop screwing around here. The country is going down the toilet. We have so much stuff we need to clean up that this is the tip of the iceberg. We need gun control. No one wants your guns, for God's sake (and let me just say here that if Obama was coming for your guns, he did a piss-poor job of it). We just want a modicum of safety for our children, and ourselves...at school, at churches, synagogues AND mosques, at concerts, at clubs. I wouldn't mind if we were a little better regarded in the rest of the world again, but let's start at home. Let's not have school days be cloudy, with a 25% chance of a massacre. Let's have that not be our reality.
Listen to the teenagers. You already let them fix your smartphones, your computers, your tablets. Let them fix your country, too, because they seem to know how to do it better than you do.
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