I have been trying to formulate a response, decide on a stance, sort out my feelings, etc, regarding the Sandy Hook Elementary School
massacre. tragedy. senseless killing of children and adults.
We hear about the shooter. About his mother. About the victims and their lives, cut short.
We've been hearing responses from all sorts of people via the media.
About 'gun control'. About the counterargument-- guns don't kill people... people kill people.
But actually, people kill people. With guns. People kill people using guns.
That being said (written)... just because you give someone a gun doesn't mean they are going to use it in a harmful way. And guns are not the only potentially dangerous weapon. Just because a person does not have access to a gun does not mean they are incapable of inflicting harm on another.
"Fixing" the "problem" is most likely not as simple as helping people and/or controlling guns. I put
fixing in quotation marks because I think the concept is, like most solutions, a moving target. I put
problem in quotation marks because violence is in no way a singular issue able to demand a singular solution. Maybe
addressing the
problems could be the semantic shift.
If the words and sentences of this post feel random, discombobulated and just not smooth, it's on purpose--rather, it's unavoidable. This is pretty indicative of how my mind has been working through the event. I've done my best to avoid television coverage and the media firestorm. No, I really don't want to hear from the children who were at Sandy Hook on Friday. No, I don't think I want to hear a teacher have to relive the events in front of a national audience. Let's let these people have some privacy. Give them access to lots of love and help if/when they need/want it. Let's let them tell their stories if/when they're ready. Maybe I'm just not ready to hear more about it... actually that's pretty evident by the lack of clarity in my own thinking.
This "we need to have a national conversation regarding gun control" is great, but even more, we need some national ACTION regarding violence. and inequalities. and religious intolerance. and many other things. But first, Americans, and worldly beings in general, stop killing each other.
