Reflecting on Tragedy

Shifting emotions on Friday evening’s drive home; grief, rage, confusion.  Trying to digest the news out of Newtown, Connecticut.  Looking for sense in a landscape of senselessness. 

I’d been in meetings during much of the day.  Getting back to my office a co-worker told me of the news; she’d been at her desk bawling as she read the news.  I took a quick look at a report and didn’t realize the severity of what had unfolded.  Another killing - back to work.

Friday night discussions on social media.  I said my piece; by this time I was consumed by anger.  Hands literally trembling with rage I could barely type; “Repeal the second amendment.”  The debate was on. 

A response; “THIS GUY SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN A MENTAL INSTITUTION.”

Another response: “Do u really think that will stop the ability for people to get guns. If your that crazy to murder a bunch of babies I'm sure you can get your hands on a weapon legal or not.”

I should have expected it right?  The guy was crazy and was going to get a gun anyway; identify the crazy people and this won’t happen; keep guns in the hands of law abiding citizens; guns don’t kill people, people kill people; if he couldn’t have used a gun he would have used a sword or a box knife or a baseball bat or slow poison or a spoon or a rabid dog; we hear this one every damn time. Whatever we can do to avoid acknowledging the 3000 pound gorilla in the societal room; the fact that we have too damn many guns and that they are too damned easy to get. 

How easy?

 August 1986: Patrick Sherrill uses two legal .45s and a .22 when he guns down 20 co-workers, killing 14 in Edmond, Oklahoma.

October 1991: George Hennard legally purchases a Ruger 9mm and a Glock 9mm, drives his pickup through the window of Lubys’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas and then kills 23 and wounds 20.  He was described as mentally disturbed.

July 2009: James Huberty’s Browning P-35 Hi-Power 9mm pistol, Winchester 1200 pump-action 12-gauge shotgun, and an Israeli Military Industries 9mm Model A Carbine (Uzi) are purchased legally and then used to kill 21 people and injure 19 at a McDonalds in San Ysidro, CA.  He had a beef with children and Mexicans; just didn’t like them.

February 2012: Jeong Soo Paek shoots and kills 4 people at a spa using a legally purchased .45. 

April 2012: One Goh legally buys a .45 caliber pistol and then kills 7 and injures 3 at Oikos University in Oakland, CA.

July 2012: James Holmes kills 12 people and wounds 59 using two Glocks, an AR-15 assault rifle and a shotgun.
William Baker, Michael McDermott, Charles Williams, Byran Uyesugi; I could go on and on and on; the list seems endless.

All of them legally armed themselves and then went into a workplace or a school or a restaurant or any public place you can think of on some mission conjured up in their twisted minds.  And so the response, just as over the weekend; they were crazy. Well of course they were crazy.  Murder is not a rational act.  

Mundane murder.  Oh I get it.  There is a distinction between these mass gun murders and your everyday gun murders.  No I’m not being facetious.  There are gun murders every day and for the most part we’ve become indifferent to them.  Drive by shootings, the home invasions, tourists who wandered into the wrong neighborhood or the random person getting shot for no particular reason other than he made the mistake of taking the last parking spot in the lot.  These are the banal gun murders that no longer illicit a reaction; the news of the day. In our society guns have become the expedient and final arbiter in anything from traffic altercations to domestic disputes to getting fired to getting a bad grade to getting disrespected.

Colors.  You want insanity?  A couple times a week I run past a memorial to two innocent young men. In March of 2008 in nearby Pinole, David Gregory and Darren Kretchmar were relaxing near Pinole Creek along a busy footpath. A gangbanger named David Ruiz walked up to the two of them and shot them.  Why?  Because Gregory was wearing red (even though he was not in a gang). Is any of this sane?  Of course it isn’t. But unless we’re intimately involved these killings no longer warrant our attention because they aren’t sensational enough. We hear about them on drive time news and pay them less mind than the traffic report.  Society has accepted them as the status quo and so they are not a part of the gun debate. Now THAT is insane.

Driving home on Friday, mere hours after the Newtown shootings and an “expert” comes on the radio to postulate that this might have been avoidable.  Someone might have noticed troubling behavior by the shooter; a change in mood such as a quiet person suddenly becoming boisterous or vice versa.  Are we all supposed to become junior psychoanalysts now?  And so I notice that one of the warehouse guys has been moody and sullen lately.  Now what?  Do I report him to HR or the police?  Is the new deterrent to be that anyone having mood swings gets taken to the station for questioning and gets his home searched? 

It’s Friday night, the tree is decorated and my grandson Jackson implores me to set up the electric train underneath; “Pweeze Papa?”  They are so sweet and innocent.  My mind temporarily drifts from the horror but even Jackson makes the horror boil back up - reminding me of what so many have lost.

Fortress America.  A poster on social media has had enough and is going to tell her husband to get rid of the guns, “Enough with the guns!”  She gets a response, “So now your home will have no defense against intruders? Do not act rashly, think it through.”  Stephen Stills’ words rush to mind;

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid

Later, on another thread there’s a comment that maybe schools should arm and train their principals “as some churches have done.”  I suppose that he’s proud to know that two legislators have echoed that notion in what could be the most preposterous, if not inappropriate, suggestions.

Representative Dennis Richardson (R-Oregon); “When will our school officials open their eyes to the reality that law enforcement officers, in such instances as these, can respond only after the unfettered killings have occurred, and that our children’s safety depends on having a number of well-trained school employees on every campus who are prepared to defend our children and save their lives?”

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas); “I wish to god she (Principal Dawn Hochsprung)  had an M4 in her office locked up, so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out, she takes him out,”

Students and parishioners hitting the deck while a teacher or priest engages in a gun battle with a nut armed with an assault weapon a couple of Glocks and enough rounds to hold off an army.  And what happens when the nut thought that one through and shows up wearing body armor like James Holmes?  Is that it?  That’s the best we can do? 

The brave and the gutless.  Dawn Hochsprung died trying to fight off the shooter.  Kaitlin Roig hid her class in the closet; the calming influence in a violent maelstrom imploring her kids to keep silent.  Victoria Soto stared down the killer and paid the ultimate price for her students.

For years now in Congress legislators have locked eyes with the NRA and blinked.  They know that if they even talk about gun control they’ll be targeted by the powerful gun lobby.  And so year after year after year we have mass murders (not to mention the previously mentioned everyday killings) and a deathly silence echoes through Capitol Hill.  Innocents die daily and these contemptible cowards completely lacking moral fiber and testicular fortitude cower in silence at the threat of the gun lobby.  Can't we at least get dialog?  The bravery of the teachers, the deaths from years of killings and the survivors' grief demands at least that.

I know of only two legislators who have shown the consistent backbone to stand up to the gun lobby; Diane Feinstein and Jackie Speier and they both have had close encounters with gun violence.  Feinstein was President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors when she discovered the body of her colleague Harvey Milk after he had been shot by another Supervisor, Dan White.  Speier survived five gunshot wounds at the Jonestown Massacre and her boss, Congressman Leo Ryan was killed at Jonestown.  Does it take this kind of intimacy with gun violence to get legislators and politicians to grow a spine and say enough is enough?  If that’s the case, I would be glad to invite all of our nation’s senators and representatives to International Boulevard in Oakland where gunplay is a common occurrence and children are all too often in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Maybe those old boys and girls need to have their fancy expensive suits stained by the blood of a two year old kid dying in their arms in order to gain a conscience and come to the realization that they can find other funding besides the NRA’s blood money.

Saturday afternoon at the San Francisco Symphony.  With my son's family his wife and daughter Sophia at a concert with children in mind.  Before the concert Soph (as we call her) wanders and wonders among the many Christmas trees adorning Davies Hall.  During the concert I can't help but to watch the curious little faces in the audience; listening, questioning, learning.  No doubt the parents are all indescribably thankful for the moments. 

Sanctimonious sleaze. Mike Huckabee, allegedly a minister: "We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

What do you say to that sort of idiocy?  Is this the comfort that the families are looking for from the clergy after they’ve lost their children?

An angry President.  It’s Sunday evening and sadly while most of the nation watches football (did I mention we’re getting immune to these tragedies?) a visibly angry Barack Obama addresses the nation and it is clear that he is fed up. 
“Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children - all of them - safe from harm? Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to love in return? Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?

"I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change.”

It’s rare that the office talk on a December Monday morning isn’t centered on football.  Instead it’s about the horrors of Friday and the weekend's dirge of bad news.  The ghastly weekend has come to an end and we’re all starting about our normal routines.  Except in Newtown, Connecticut where life will really never be the same again.  

For the parents and survivors the season of joy and hope is an eternal universe of pain.  Christmas presents will go unopened as a grieving town presents the only gifts that they are left to bestow; mementoes and stuffed animals at undersized gravesites.  They are left with the burning question that will forever be unanswered – why?  They will likely also wonder if this carnage will have been in vain. 

Will we get about our daily lives and let the memory fade?  Will we once again let the legislators off the hook, as they probably hope?  As early as Friday night we were saying, "I don't want to hear anymore, I don't want to know anymore."  Already putting it behind us?  We don’t reflect on Columbine or Virginia Tech or Red Lake much anymore do we?  Not until something like Sandy Hook comes along to jog our memories.  In the interim, between the sensational incidents of mass carnage, while kids get shot for wearing the wrong color, or disrespecting a classmate or just sitting in the supposed safety of their own homes, will we allow an industry of death to continue to produce weapons that have no purpose other than to kill people?  Will we continue to listen to and refuse to challenge the inane and nonsensical comparisons of box cutters, hammers and bats to semi-automatic weapons with 30 round clips?  The gun lobby dazzles us with two arguments each inconsistent with the other - we need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the insane; if someone is insane and determined to get a gun there is nothing we can do to stop him.  Will we keep buying that snake oil?  In truth they're probably right.  As of 2009 there were 310 million non-military guns in America, so that should make it pretty easy for anyone, crazy or sane, to get a gun.  And so we continue to proliferate and make it easier still.  Are we going to sit by and calmly accept the loony, crackpot notion that what we need are more guns to deter gun violence?  Is our most creative solution to have armed citizens and staff at every public venue and event and make the entire nation one gigantic OK Corral?  Do we really want to become Mogadishu?

For the record, some of this post was written after Gabriel Giffords was shot.  Some was written after the Aurora shooting.  I put those notes aside; not wanting to get embroiled in the gun debate. In doing so I’ve been hiding my head in the sand much as our legislators. Well, as we’ve seen we can’t wait for legislators. If we don’t start talking about gun violence and hold those legislators accountable and try to get some semblance of control over an intolerable situation then we are never going to see the end of this and the name Sandy Hook will be replaced by an even more horrific event.   

Luciana, my third and youngest grandchild is not yet two.  She's just starting now to call me "papa" and when she does she looks at me and smiles as if proud of the accomplishment: looking for my praise.  Can we please make some progress and get something done by the time she is ready for school? 

We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law - no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.

"But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that - then surely we have an obligation to try."

~ President Barack Obama.  Newtown High School, Newtown, Connecticut.  December 16^th 2012.