I don’t have any solace to impart here; I’m definitely no man of G-d, and I am certainly as confused and outraged as the rest of you are. What startled me almost as much as the senseless violence was some very angry messages on my phone, directed at my country, and at people who as it turned out had nothing to do with this horror. The anger and fear is completely understandable, especially from parents, and that unbridled rage, well I felt it too. While I do not have children, I can only imagine the fear in every parent’s heart upon hearing every news source broadcast that the world has just been proven to be that much more dangerous. But every time I have experienced rage, either in my personal life or on the news, it seems to me that it is often misdirected. I’m not saying that the people who decry gun violence are wrong. I’m not a gun lover. No doubt there too many guns in the streets of America, and it is far too easy for an unbalanced killer to acquire them.
Whenever an atrocity of this magnitude erupts, people suddenly want solutions to complicated problems, and there is an angry outcry against the perceived cause. But where there is a will there is a McVeigh. Tim McVeigh killed 168 people and injured about 800 others in Oklahoma with a bomb he made out of readily available ingredients. Should we then outlaw fertilizer? Madmen and deranged zealots will continue to find ways to do great harm if they remain hidden among us. The question I ask is how do we shine a light on them; how do we diffuse these time bombs? When Cho went nuts and killed thirty plus people at Virginia Tech, I said the same thing. You will never remove all the guns in our society, no matter how logical and practical that may seem - it’s about as likely as Al Gore’s hubris-inspired march to reverse the relentless cycle of nature. While it is certainly a worthwhile crusade to make it much harder for the wrong people to own guns, I think a more effective approach would be to figure out a better way to target and disarm the time bombs. If we re-directed half of the money we have so far spent on the embarrassingly ill advised war on drugs and diverted it to mental health care, I’ll wager that many of the above mentioned tragedies might have been averted. It is shameful how badly we have failed the mentally ill in our society. If we took the embarrassing amount of money spent on the most recent U.S presidential elections and opened a few thousand walk-in mental health clinics, if friends and family became a little bit more proactive and responsible for the ticking time bombs in their own families; if we could somehow address and stem the tide of alienation and hopelessness that so many feel, perhaps we could stop at least some of this tragic killing. Remember, it was Ted Kaczynski’s brother who blew the whistle on the infamous Unibomber, finally ending his killing spree.
One of my nephews sent me a text shortly after the Newtown rampage, and in it he said he feared for his little daughter’s future in such a troubled world. Words cannot express how that saddens me. I am saddened that evil exists in the world and that it can shatter the lives of so many families, in Newtown, in Aurora, in Columbine, in Afghanistan, in Congo, in Syria, and in all the other parts of the world where the good and the innocent are preyed upon. I have no answers for the senseless violence that takes place in our world, but I remain hopeful that love is the most powerful weapon in our arsenal. I haven’t learned yet how to live my life without fear, but as I responded to my nephew, demonstrating and accepting love might just keep my fear in check. I told him I loved him and his whole family, and I asked him to hug his little girl for me. This is a battle we must win, and I am still hopeful we will. May you find some solace with your families this holiday season.
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
2 comments:
Brilliantly said. And I have found very few people who have flipped the coin and questioned why a young man should have done what he did, seemingly out of the blue. Because to question that would be, what, not compassionate to those who have suffered? Of course it wouldn't: it would be asking *exactly* the right questions. I don't claim to know much about your mental health services, though I speak to many who are under their various teams who have huge difficulties. Over here, the standard of mental health care is generally appalling. It is only a matter of time before we see similar tragedies over here, because too many are not getting anywhere near the amount of help they need. And then what are we going to blame? Guns?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts - assholes or not ;) - because they are far more realistic than any others I have read.
Always reading, by the way, just not often commenting.
Nic
I turn on my television and see extreme gun violence. I go to the movies and see extreme gun violence. I see first-person-shooter video/software games and see extreme gun violence. And yet nobody is talking about that?! And we wonder why the mentally instable among us emulate what they see in the media?
I see a YouTube video Hollywood stars decrying guns, but also see someone take that video and splice in clips from movies and TV showing those same Hollywood actors using guns in violent ways. Hypocrites.
I see people like Bloomberg in NYC or Nancy Pelosi talking about gun control and confiscation, and see that they are talking about other people, not themselves. They will still be protected by armed bodyguards. But they prescribe a different solution for the serfs.
Blaming guns in like blaming fertilizer for the Timothy McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma City. Or blaming cars for the whack-jobs who run people down on the sidewalk. Or blaming spoons for making people fat.
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