An already dated map of mass shooting since Sandy Hook. |
Note: The following post
first appeared on December 15, 2012, the day after the unspeakable tragedy of
the mass murder and suicide at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Since then, there have been at least
1,044 mass shootings in America,
with shooters killing at least 1,327 people and wounding 3,784 more. They are coming so fast and furious these
days we are numb. Since then I have
written posts and poems after several massacres, the most recent after the
shootings in San Bernardino. Some of
those posts were little more than sputtering
outrage. More recently there is a
note of near helpless despair. Was I saner or simply more gullible when I wrote this post?
A darkness has descended on the season of the Festivals of Life. The laughing children just yesterday awaiting
Santa are gone, their families in anguish, their school mates traumatized, a
whole nation stunned once again by senseless, but no longer surprising, gun
violence.
On top of his post is a picture of an ancient Pennsylvania flintlock long rifle
passed down in the Murfin family for
more than two hundred years. It is the
only heirloom of family history I have older than my father’s generation. It was, by clear physical evidence, a much
used working rifle which put food on the table and likely was carried or used
in the wars between the settlers like my ancestors and the Native Americans that caused the frontier along the Ohio River and the old Northwest Territory to bleed for
decades. That gun is part of the
American story.
Some think that the romance of that gun, the six shooters in the hands of impossibly
square jawed handsome men in white hats, the spitting Tommy Guns of gangsters and
G-Men, the cannon sized pistols of Dirty Harry and fantasy vigilantes are the problem. That our national obsession with them has
turned us into a nation of gun worshipers who if we don’t kill personally
indulge in rich fantasies in which we and our arms are heroes.
Maybe. But it
is deeper than that.
I responded to the inevitable pro-gun Facebook claim that armed staff members
might have prevented the killings from happening. This is part of what I wrote:
There
are no easy answers. We dug a huge, murderous hole for ourselves in this
country unmatched anywhere in the world. As many guns as people, probably more.
More licensed dealers than grocery stores. More annual deaths than any on-going
war. A greater percent of our population in prison for much longer times than
any place save China and Iran. A pervasive culture of fear and suspicion.
Mental health care rationed as if were treasure. Macho posturing passing for
manhood. And none of it has done any good. We are no safer. Your answer—more
guns, more prisons, more fear? We have to make deep changes, all of us, me and
you. Talk to each other instead of demonizing each other. Put our children
ahead of our pride. Give a little something up. Give a little more back…we all
have to give something. Pride first.
I
think the original poster was wrong as he can be about guns. He undoubtedly thinks I’m a gun grabbing communist. It would be easy to stare at each other over
the abyss filled with the bodies of children and forgetting them, hate each
other for who we think the other is.
But
I know Bill is a guy who sits on a
sofa every morning with his five year old granddaughter, sharing old movies,
cookies and funny stories. He loves his
grandchildren as much as I love mine. He
means no child harm. And he genuinely
grieves for the loss.
The photo I posted of my five year old self--the blond in the middle--with my father and twin brother Tim on Christmas morning. |
Hours
after this exchange, I posted, “It has been suggested in honor of the children
lost today, we post a photo of ourselves at 5 years of age as our profile
picture. I posted this one recently used for the holiday season. It is a
reminder of our own once tender selves—and all of the lost years the children
slain today have been denied.” Moments
later Bill posted a fuzzy photo of a grinning blond boy proudly showing off two
nice fish. He understood. Across the chasm of our differences our five
year old selves joined with the five year olds snuffed out in Connecticut.
It’s
going to take deep, deep work and decades of pain and sorrow to turn around the
culture of death, violence, revenge, and fear that have turned our nation into
a daily carnal house.
Five
hours ago I had paragraphs of angry words composed in my head, waiting for my
fingers to caress the keyboard. I was
filled with righteousness and a spirit of wrathful vengeance. I wanted to spit defiance at every gun nut, every
well paid slick lobbyist, every craven politician that enabled the
carnage.
At
the same time behind locked doors terrified men cradling their darlings leapt
over the bodies of the children in a panicked response that the killings would
cause the gun grabbers to knock down their doors in the dead of night. They were filled with murderous rage,
too. Against the shooter, but also
against their neighbors who feel differently about guns.
Look,
I’m not making a case for any namby-pamby
moral equivalence. None of that
one-hand-on-the-other-hand bullshit or the pseudo impartial “balance” of the
professional press. I have a firm grasp
on the morality of this cultural obsession and I know there are real villains
in the plush suites of the NRA, Fox News, and the arms lobby
But
unless the ordinary folks on both sides of this divide can find a way to
recognize each other’s simple humanity and reach out to find whatever shaky
common ground we have we are sliding into the very civil war which I think frankly the worst of the other side
not-so-secretly yearn for.
I
have no magic solutions, but maybe a few what ifs that will require us all to
give up a little something.
What
if we acknowledged that there are just too damn many guns in this country and
that any idgit, criminal or psycho can get a hold of them without breaking a
sweat?
What
if we found ways to reduce the numbers of those guns out there, starting with
the essentially military weapons designed not for hunting, target practice, or self-protection
but for the efficient killing of other human beings?
What
if every dick in America could not get a Federal
Gun Dealer’s License on the strength of a form requiring far less
information than securing a car loan and what if they couldn’t deal guns out of
car trunks, kitchen tables, and gun show to any piss-a-hole-in-the-snow warm
body that shows up with cash?
What
if we really checked the background of all buyers not just for criminal
histories, but for demonstrable mental illness, those with active orders of
protection against them, those who are known to belong to hate groups,
militias, and insurrectionists?
Sounds
like the usual “Liberal anti-gun agenda?”
Notice it does not call for confiscation of all weapons, allows for
hunting and sports shooting, and even for the possession of reasonable
self-defense weapons by responsible owners.
It ain't going to happen, folks, and things like this promoted by gun opponents feeds the paranoia on the other side, hardens lines of opposition , and multiply the chances of an actual civil war. |
And
you gun control folks—give up the
illusion that in this country hand guns or all guns can be simply made illegal
or that the Second Amendment having
been abused, needs to be rescinded. It
ain’t gonna happen and you need to acknowledge that.
The
folks out in my home country of Wyoming and
broad swaths of the West and South and plenty of pockets of hunters
and shooters in the rest of the country are not just kidding with their “you’ll
get my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands” rhetoric. A lot of them are ready and some are eager to
take to the hills and wild places and make like Afghan mujaheddin waging a guerrilla war. The US
Army literally does not have enough troops to win that war.
And
remember that the majority of guns in this country are in the hands of
frightened middle class folks in their suburban villages and safe urban
enclaves. No American politician, whatever
black helicopter fantasies gun lover may harbor, is going to authorize police
to kick down their doors in the middle of the night to size their guns.
Even
if you could outlaw all gun sales, an efficient black market would be in place
the next day. Our coastlines are long, our borders porous, and our smugglers
experienced and creative. Guns would
continue to pour in to the country, probably in greater numbers than ever just
as prohibition and drug laws increased the appetite and usage of the banned
substance.
At
best we will get a slow attrition of guns on the streets which will take
decades to come down to reasonable levels.
In
the mean time we have to work to make mental health services easily and widely
available on the same footing as any other health care. And since we do such a damn bad job at
providing even general health care, we are going to have to have a little dose
of “socialized medicine.” Don’t like that? Sit down, shut up, and deal
with it.
We
have to stop sending every 17 year old with a joint to prison. Our draconian drug laws enable the street
wars to control a thriving black market, send huge numbers—mostly Black and Latin—into the universities
of crime, and stigmatizes them for life so that they become essentially
locked out of legitimate employment. The
highly lucrative prison-industrial complex
needs to be smashed.
Even
harder will be bridging the oceans of fear and suspicion that divide us by
race, religion, language, politics, gender, sexual orientation, and class. We’ve grown too comfortable in our cocoons
and too attached to a casual bigotry we pretend does not exist. We need to get to know each other not because
it’s a nice thing to do but because our survival as a society ultimately
depends on it.
This
last is the deepest soul work we must all do for ourselves and together. Pride, ego, and decades of carefully nursed
grudges and resentments will all have to be put aside. It will be painful. It will be wrenching.
But
not more so than the next massacre of the innocents.
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