I am sitting here crying as I look through the photos of little children and a few adults whose lives ended last week. They died for no real reason, other than a man decided that they should. He took some guns to their school and that was that, for them and for him.
For us, those still alive, that is not the end. I have (as I’m sure you have) heard those of the opinion that we need more, better or stricter gun control. Even my dear sweet aunty from England chimed in with her two pence in this regard. She stated that she, “still cannot understand how any country in it’s right mind doesn’t immediately bring in measures to control the sale and ownership of weapons!”
I made a reply to her as follows:
The massacre was shocking and so very sad. It’s all I can do to look at the images of those little children or their broken-hearted parents. All I have to offer are prayers.
I could not disagree with you more in regards to your views on gun control. I firstly am opposed to anything reactionary…especially in politics or legally. Something happens and everyone says let’s make a law to prevent that or let’s elect new leaders to deal with it. Those measures are backwards minded. What happened was not caused by a gun, it was caused by a defective human being. Automobiles kill much greater numbers of humans every year and no one ever wants to ban cars. Insane people who want to kill may use a gun, but they could just as easily use a car or a knife (and have) to damage and destroy – shall we make those illegal as well? These events many times happen in schools, should we close the schools as well? Sometimes people do crazy harmful things -You can’t predict it or prevent it with unnecessary laws, all that winds up happening, is the liberty of the law-abiding get’s limited. The best we can do is hope we aren’t sitting next to them when they snap.
http://news.yahoo.com/mass-school-bombing-1927-puts-sandy-hook-context-185608674.html
The problem is, that human beings have thousands of years of history of horrible cruelty to one another. No country or race is immune, everyone has “picked on” someone. At times throughout history, lone loonies have committed terribly destructive acts. Sometimes these nut jobs get others to go along with them – In the middle east in the name of religion, in Nazi Germany in the name of national pride….think about the folks Jim Jones conned into drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. It’s truly sickening.
We as surviving human beings, left behind to pick up the pieces afterwards, have a thing in our mental biology which wants to make sense of these tragedies…the truth is the word senseless applies in spades. You can’t fix stupid and you can’t figure out crazy. There is no way to predict or stop a psycho bent on a destructive mission, you can’t figure out why he did it after the fact…so we move on to phase three…we want to assign blame. I am sure if you could ask that guy, his mom did something to hurt him and so this was his way of paying her back. Then about the time he got done he realized that his plan had taken him from being a (perceived) victim to being a (real) villain and so he offed himself.
Since we can’t understand the why, the next best thing for us to place blame…it was the fault of guns. I’ve been around many guns in my life, none of which has killed a human…why don’t we talk to these guns and find out why they don’t kill humans? What seems so right minded (stopping violence by controlling guns) makes no sense and is actually far from right minded. It is actually a symptom of failing to be honest with ourselves about the situation, it is an unwillingness to face our finite nature. Something horrible happened, it happened to a group of people who were totally helpless, it happened for no good reason and it hurts terribly for all of us – even for those who were just by-standers. We cant’t understand it and we hate it. So let’s second guess, and talk about how we could have prevented it (even though we couldn’t have). Let’s try to place blame and get all huffy about the need for gun control. Let’s try to second guess everything because shouldn’t we have been able to keep this from happening?
NO, it happened and it can’t be undone. It doesn’t make sense, and we can’t make it. It will happen again – somewhere, sometime. To believe that, to know that is right minded. What else is right minded?
To grieve and hurt with empathy and compassion for those who have lost a child or loved one. To acknowledge the loss is greater than we can conceive, bear or calculate. To let this tragedy draw our hearts together to focus on how we the human community are hurt and devastated. That is right minded. It is also right minded to let these tragedies motivate us to move away from selfishness and isolation and to love more fully. To cherish and appreciate each person and each minute we have, because tomorrow is not guaranteed for any of us.
To live a more meaningful life.
My heart is broken for those people who have lost children and loved ones in this wicked act, but whats broken in humanity cannot be fixed
by laws, controls, governments or any other means which humanity can devise. We see the evidence daily, yet we refuse to recognize it.
OK, I’m finished…