As a father, I found myself, as I watched and listened to the reports, holding back tears, thankful that I knew my children were safe and sound. Realizing how precarious life really is.
National tragedies like these have a natural course. There is the shock. There is the dizzying array of reports, most of them conflicting as rumors and innuendo begin to substitute for substantiated facts. You always hope for the best, but yesterday we learned that if it was not the worst-case scenario coming true, it was its close cousin.
After the shock comes anger, and then a sense of helplessness, sadness and loss.
But I’m tired of all of these emotions. I’m tired of this heartache. I felt it when Columbine happened. I felt it when Virginia Tech happened. And I felt it when Aurora happened.
This one hit close to home. My cousin lives in the next town over. Her kids go to school in the next town over. People in their synagogue live in Newtown.
This is the 28th shooting of this sort since Columbine. And the frequency is increasing – this is the 8th mass shooting this year alone.
So the question is – are we simply going to sit around and do nothing, as we largely have done since 1999, other than upgrade some of our security measures? The school in Connecticut had just done this – but to little avail.
The thing about these shootings is that if people are willing to die when they carry out their horrible deeds, no amount of deterrence is going to work. Open carry advocates argue that having weapons in the hands of ordinary citizens is a solution.
I don’t agree. The shooter in this case was wearing a bullet proof vest to make it more difficult for him to be stopped. Teachers or principals strapped with weapons is not the kind of environment I think we want in a classroom, and would likely invite other more frequent problems.
As tragic as this is, it is still a very rare occurrence. So, for an event that happens so infrequently, the risk of introducing weapons into schools seems much more risky.
Tightening security may make us feel better, but do we really want our children to go to school in virtual prisons?
I heard a lot of talk yesterday that now is not the time to talk about gun control. My question is: if not now, when? If not us – who?
I am not a knee-jerk gun control advocate. I largely believe that we are not going to ban our way to a solution here.
But at the same time, banning is not the only option with regard to gun control.
I always hear from gun supporters – guns do not kill people, people kill people. But guns help. Observe the man standing on the corner, he is waving his arms around forming a simulated weaponry, the cars pass on the street, he pulls back the trigger and simulates firing off a few rounds, blam, blam, blam.
The man is crazy. But he has no weapon and no one dies.
The New York Times writes on Friday: “Each slaughter of innocents seems to get more appalling. A high school. A college campus. A movie theater. People meeting their congresswoman. A shopping mall in Oregon, just this Tuesday. On Friday, an elementary school classroom.”
The question is, what can we do? The New York Times writes, “What about addressing the problem of guns gone completely out of control, a problem that comes up each time a shooter opens fire on a roomful of people but then disappears again?”
For those who say, this is not the time to discuss gun control – we have tried that, and it is not working.
The problem that we have, at least in discussing the possibility of some common sense, is that Republicans, as the NY Times notes, “are mired in an ideology that opposes any gun control. After each tragedy, including this one, some people litter the Internet with grotesque suggestions that it would be better if everyone (kindergarten teachers?) were armed.”
And the Democrats are too fearful of the gun lobby and “will not support an assault weapons ban, or a ban on high-capacity bullet clips, or any one of a half-dozen other sensible ideas.”
President Obama said Friday that “we have been through this too many times” and that “we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”
But the New York Times asks, “When will that day come? It did not come after the 1999 Columbine shooting, or the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, or the murders in Aurora last summer.”
“The more that we hear about gun control and nothing happens, the less we can believe it will ever come. Certainly, it will not unless Mr. Obama and Congressional leaders show the courage to make it happen.”
As Charles Blow, New York Times columnist, writes, “How many more deaths and mass shootings will it take for Washington to begin to lead the country in a deeper conversation about sensible gun controls? What will it take for our politicians to take firm and principled positions on gun policies and stand up to the gun lobby in this country? Surely this is a moment that calls all of us to reckoning.”
But there is something else that we are not talking about. This isn’t just about guns. You see, just as the madman can do little damage yelling “blam” on the street corner without the weapon in his hand, the gun does little damage without the madman. The madman without the gun is a spectacle, not a threat. It takes the combination of the madman with the gun to be the threat, and therefore what we have to do in this society is stop taking an either/or approach. We have to deal with both problems.
In Columbine we learned about the power of bullying. In Virginia Tech it was impotence of mental health. The same thing in Arizona and Colorado.
In Davis, we may have had our own tragic situation but the police were able to intervene in time to stop a potential tragedy.
We do not know much of the perpetrator in Connecticut, we do not know why he did what he did. We will likely learn something about that in the coming days and weeks.
But just as we need to have that conversation on reasonable gun laws, we need to understand that, as long as there are disturbed, angry and desperate people, all of whom have these images burned into their heads, we will continue to feed into this cycle until we can address not just the guns, but the mental side of the equation.
For me, now, I am all for figuring out solutions to the guns because we have too many of these shootings and not enough action. But if that is all we do, we will have lost a real opportunity here to fix a huge problem, and that is in the mental health system.
In the meantime, hold your kids tight tonight.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
In trying to make some sense for myself, and possibly to intellectualize my way past the pain of this most recent shooting spree, I came across the most clear and lucid explanation from Gregory Gibson whose 18 year old son was killed in a similar ( though far less deadly shooting) in 1992. Mr. Gibson writes in his opinion page article in the NYT :
“I came to realize that, in essence, this is the way we in America want things to be. We want our freedom, and we want our firearms, and if we have to endure the occasional school shooting, so be it.”
Mr. Gibson came to this realization after years of advocating, letter and book writing, conferencing, public speaking, and lobbying for gun control.
While I completely agree with you David that both the mental health and gun control side of this issue are vital, we are many, many years of research away from effective approaches to managing these type of mental illnesses.
Sensible gun regulations ( or ammunition regulation) would be within our grasp within months if we simply chose to value the lives of our children more than the ability to own more and more efficient ways of killing people because a document written in the 1700s is interpreted as saying that we have that right.
“we are many, many years of research away from effective approaches to managing these type of mental illnesses.”
While I don’t have that specific knowledge at my fingertips, it is not surprising and I don’t disagree that the quickest and most immediate remedy is re-examining our gun laws, I really believe without dealing with the mental health side of the equation, we will not solve this with gun laws alone.
We outlaw weapons, and they attack with fertilizer bombs or make-shift molotov cocktails. People talk about preventing the ease of these attacks – and I agree – but many of these are well planned and thought out and eliminating guns, doesn’t prevent the attack.
Roughly 300 million firearms owned by civilians in the United States as of 2010 were NOT used to hurt down and kill innocent children today. Evil people love unarmed potential victims. Ignorant people blame guns for the actions of people, blame cars for drunk driving killings and box cutters for crashed planes. The planes that hit the trade towers were not blamed for deaths. The Kool Aid used to kill innocent children at Jamestown was not blamed for the deaths. The poison gas used to kill Jews were not blamed for the deaths. Wise up America and think.
The schools are run by Government. When you put your child in a public school you put them in the custody of Government, which is why cops are allowed to question children without parent consent when they are in the Government custody at schools. The Government is responsible to protect them. So when the Government, Politicians fail, they use these innocent deaths to put up smoke screens by blaming and distracting those in grief, at their weakest time and when they are not thinking clearly.
What better way to conceal the fact that the Government failed to protect children in their custody. Innocent kids died in the Oklahoma bombing of a federal building and the Ryder truck used to hold the bomb was not blamed.
It is sad that the deaths of innocence has to be put on the back burner so people can use this opportunity to go after Guns using emotion, pain and grief to cover the real hidden agenda.
It this coward lunatic had used a car and ran over 50 children, no one would be calling for banning cars. If he used gasoline to burn the school down, no one would be calling for the banning of gasoline. If he had used prescription drugs to poison school lunches there would no calls for banning of food or prescription drugs.
This is a terrible day for many people and it was caused by the evil deeds of a human being. Shame on those for exploiting this terrible event for their personal hidden political agendas.
….and monies for mental health keep diminishing or become threatened. Look no farther than the cuts to our county mental health services.
The President does not need to garner support for reelection, he could be bold here……many of us woukd be proud if he would..
As to the bullet proof vest comment, cops are killed all the time and they wear vest. A gun against a gun is much better odds than a gun against unarmed adults or kids.
Time and time again I see more victims created by gun laws. LA Rodney King riots, cops surrounded the affected area and did not go in, it was too dangerous, so the unarmed people trapped inside the area in their homes not only did not have guns to protect themselves, they did not have Gov or police coming to help. In NY and NJ after the storms, no phones, no 911, no electricity and the looters loved it. Rape, home invasion, theft all were rampant and no way to call for help, so all you do is be a good victim.
New Orleans storm, same thing. When will people realize taking away the ability to deal with and confront evil only increases evil’s destruction.
If gun control is so great, why doesn’t any Government say we are doing away with our guns to defend our country? Because they are not stupid and they know others will exploit that fact.
A gun in a school is a recipe for disaster. To mitigate a small number of school shootings of this sort seems to extend the risk beyond what the danger warrant.s
You are also conflating gun control with the elimination of guns, which is not the same issue.
Roger Rabbit
Perhaps your comments were not directed at mine. I would not want to put words in your mouth. However, if you were addressing my comments, I would like to point out that your are attacking a position that I did not take.
I was raised in a hunting family. This is probably the major reason that hunger was not a part of my early childhood. I do not consider guns evil in and of them
selves. I do consider them a speedy and convenient way for someone who is mentally ill to kill many people in a very short period of time. I would like not to eliminate guns, or take away anyone’s constitutional rights, but rather to treat this is a public health issue and to minimize the potential for harm just as I encourage my patient’s to get, but do not believe in forcing people to accept, a flu vaccination.
What I advocate is some compromise solutions to limit the number of people that can be killed in a minimal amount of time:
1) More restrictions on who can purchase a gun so that the severely mentally ill have less access
( although that would have not helped in this case unless the shooters mother was also mentally ill)
2) Limiting either the types of weapons sold ( such that multiple rounds could not be shot rapid fire) or the amount
of ammunition that could be purchased.
3) Encouraging citizens to keep their weapons safely stored, such as at gun clubs where they could be checked
out for the purposes of hunting, sport shooting and the like. This kind of precaution would likely have prevented
this particular shooting where the weapons were apparently stolen from the mother and then used against her
and many others.
4) I agree that evil should be confronted, however, I feel that the best strategy to deal with evil, just as the best strategy to deal with illness
From an LA Times article ([url]http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1216-lopez-guns-20121216,0,4562115.column[/url]):
[quote]Yee told me he thinks most gun owners are responsible people who respect the power of their weapons and don’t abuse that deadly potential. But in its zeal, he said, the gun lobby lets deadly weapons fall into the hands of less-responsible citizens.[/quote]
That sums up my view here.
Though I don’t think there’s ever any good reason for anyone to own an assault rifle or 5000 rounds of ammo it will be impossible to get Americans to ever give up their arms. In many areas where government has tried to stop gun ownership crime has actually gone up. We’ll never know how many crimes or deaths are stopped by the deterrent that the potential victim might also be armed.
oops, managed to hit the send key to early
That last statement was intended to be: I feel that the best strategy to deal with evil, just as the best strategy to deal with illness is prevention. When prevention fails, the second best strategy is to limit its impact. I feel that limiting the availability of these types of weapons would be a far more effective strategy than arming a population that has no experience with guns, no ready place to keep and store them safely, and no ability to reach them rapidly and fire back effectively during the once in a lifetime event when their sharp shooting skills might be needed. Firing a gun quickly and accurately is dependent upon practice. I know, I was taught by my dad as a child. Would you for instance mandate that all of our schools be staffed by sharp shooters ? Would you want to pay the additional costs in your taxes ? Would you mandate that all teachers, or even all principles be required to attain and maintain sharp shooting skills ?
I have put forward some of my suggestions for how to approach this problem so as to maximize safety while protecting constitutional rights. I would be very interested in hearing your workable solutions.