The murder of 20 first graders in Connecticut has undone me in a way that nothing since September 11th has.
I intended to get back to blogging about health and wellness today, but I can't stop thinking about Newtown. I pretty much succeeded in avoiding political commentary throughout the elections- and God knows it wasn't for lack of material or opinions- so I hope you'll excuse me if I use this forum to express some of what I'm struggling with.
I don't want to "Like" pictures of cute kids with "R.I.P." in the corner on Facebook. I can't watch "The Voice" sing "Hallelujah" and then transition to "Great Balls of Fire". I am heartbroken, and I am FURIOUS that we go through this ridiculous pantomime of grief.
This is a terror we brought on ourselves, and on all of those little kids and their teachers, families, and community. We created this heinousness through our repeated refusal as a country to behave like rational, humane adults and outlaw the sale of the weapons of mass destruction favored by murderers looking to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible.
The guns used in Newtown were the same type used in a movie theater and in a high school in Colorado, at Gabbie Gifford's constituent event in Arizona, on campus at Virginia Tech, by the snipers who hunted people around DC, and in a shopping mall in Oregon last week. The vast majority of the guns used in these tragedies were purchased legally. If you have the stomach for more fun facts, this article is very informative.
So why are we pretending that we don't know what causes these horrors? When I hear newscasters or experts say things like, "We may never know why this happened" I want to throw something. True, we do not know what particular twisted, seeping, seething logic drove the black hole that was Adam Lanza to do what he did. But we all know why this happened.
This happened because we are a country which has gotten comfortable lying to itself about facts we find inconvenient, and which has fallen in love with a self-image created by Hollywood and Fox News that was never true.
We like to pretend we are all cowboys and heroes, each of us the last stand against some imagined threat, from home invasion to government repression. We insist that OUR rights to unrestricted access to semi-automatic weapons, enshrined in the Second Amendment, override the Declaration of Independence's "certain inalienable rights" of others to, among other things, life.
In the past, we have accepted facile arguments ("Guns don't kill people..") against gun control, despite all evidence to the contrary. Last week, a madman in China attacked 20 school children, injuring 20 of them but killing none- because he had a knife instead of a gun. The murderer in Newtown slaughtered those children with guns purchased legally by his mother.
I call bullshit.
Yes, of course we need more mental health services (and this letter is a heartbreaking example of the gaps in our system), but you can't legislate away the human condition. We will always have the mentally disturbed in our midst; we don't have to have them heavily armed, and there is no regulation that would keep those types of weapons out the hands of people like Adam except to make them completely illegal. Period.
I am about the least likely person in the world to cite a Bible passage, but 1 Corinthians 13:11 came to mind: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
I am sorry for those for whom these guns are a recreational pass time, but I'm asking you to grow up. If my giving up reading novels would save the lives of 20 6-year olds who had just written their first letter to Santa on their own, I would put books down and never read again.
Last week, 20 actual children paid the debt we've incurred by indulging our selfish childishness.
It's time for America to grow up.
I intended to get back to blogging about health and wellness today, but I can't stop thinking about Newtown. I pretty much succeeded in avoiding political commentary throughout the elections- and God knows it wasn't for lack of material or opinions- so I hope you'll excuse me if I use this forum to express some of what I'm struggling with.
I don't want to "Like" pictures of cute kids with "R.I.P." in the corner on Facebook. I can't watch "The Voice" sing "Hallelujah" and then transition to "Great Balls of Fire". I am heartbroken, and I am FURIOUS that we go through this ridiculous pantomime of grief.
This is a terror we brought on ourselves, and on all of those little kids and their teachers, families, and community. We created this heinousness through our repeated refusal as a country to behave like rational, humane adults and outlaw the sale of the weapons of mass destruction favored by murderers looking to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible.
The guns used in Newtown were the same type used in a movie theater and in a high school in Colorado, at Gabbie Gifford's constituent event in Arizona, on campus at Virginia Tech, by the snipers who hunted people around DC, and in a shopping mall in Oregon last week. The vast majority of the guns used in these tragedies were purchased legally. If you have the stomach for more fun facts, this article is very informative.
So why are we pretending that we don't know what causes these horrors? When I hear newscasters or experts say things like, "We may never know why this happened" I want to throw something. True, we do not know what particular twisted, seeping, seething logic drove the black hole that was Adam Lanza to do what he did. But we all know why this happened.
This happened because we are a country which has gotten comfortable lying to itself about facts we find inconvenient, and which has fallen in love with a self-image created by Hollywood and Fox News that was never true.
We like to pretend we are all cowboys and heroes, each of us the last stand against some imagined threat, from home invasion to government repression. We insist that OUR rights to unrestricted access to semi-automatic weapons, enshrined in the Second Amendment, override the Declaration of Independence's "certain inalienable rights" of others to, among other things, life.
In the past, we have accepted facile arguments ("Guns don't kill people..") against gun control, despite all evidence to the contrary. Last week, a madman in China attacked 20 school children, injuring 20 of them but killing none- because he had a knife instead of a gun. The murderer in Newtown slaughtered those children with guns purchased legally by his mother.
I call bullshit.
Yes, of course we need more mental health services (and this letter is a heartbreaking example of the gaps in our system), but you can't legislate away the human condition. We will always have the mentally disturbed in our midst; we don't have to have them heavily armed, and there is no regulation that would keep those types of weapons out the hands of people like Adam except to make them completely illegal. Period.
I am about the least likely person in the world to cite a Bible passage, but 1 Corinthians 13:11 came to mind: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
I am sorry for those for whom these guns are a recreational pass time, but I'm asking you to grow up. If my giving up reading novels would save the lives of 20 6-year olds who had just written their first letter to Santa on their own, I would put books down and never read again.
Last week, 20 actual children paid the debt we've incurred by indulging our selfish childishness.
It's time for America to grow up.
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