Changing My Vocabulary

I wrote this essay a year and half ago after a mass shooting but did not publish it. I have grown both numb from senseless violence and weary of hearing the same excuses for doing nothing. On average, more than 32,000 people die a year from gun violence. Admittedly, most are not mass shootings; more than half are suicides. That does not make the deaths any less tragic. For many Americans, these deaths are a worthy price to pay for liberty. Not for me.

This week my emotions have run from grief to anger to frustration and hopelessness. Too close to my home, three people were killed and several more were injured by a shooter in Colorado Springs. A week later, in San Bernardino, we had the second deadliest shooting since Newtown, CT. 

When a local news organization posted the simple word "Enough" on Facebook, it was criticized for expressing an opinion. Would gun lovers be happy if the news media offered equal coverage to people who haven't had enough of mass killings? Gun lovers have chimed in on social media once again to say that we should all be armed. Again, that is not for me. I will not arm myself to take another person's life.

Changing My Vocabulary

One of my Facebook friends, a lover of Killing Tools, shared an offensive cartoon questioning why the National Killing Tool Association is at fault for a mass shooting.

So yet another liberal left-wing whack job goes on yet another fatal mass shooting spree because he couldn't get laid and that's the NRA's fault??? Jeez, it's no wonder liberalism's regarded as a mental disorder.

Evidently, this powerful organization's members/supporters think the NRA is the victim of killing tool violence - not the people who have actually lost their lives at the hands of someone using the tools they promote. They also seem to think that people who cling to their right to bear killing tools are conservative and sane, while those of us who favor commonsense killing tool controls, like universal background checks, are liberal left-wing whack jobs that are also committing the very crimes we want to prevent. Not only is that offensive, it makes no sense.

What does make sense is to try to understand the reasons behind the increasing killing tool violence in this country. Why is it that some people can't handle the normal disappointments of life and feel the need to strike out at the world? I wondered about that fifteen years ago when two young men killed twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School. At the time, the motive for that massacre was thought to be revenge for bullying. Yet kids were bullied and rejected when I was in school and they did not resort to murder.

How would I rewrite the offensive Facebook post using my new vocabulary?

Yet another disturbed young man strikes out in anger, taking the lives of others with easily obtainable killing tools. What kind of values did he learn in this land of liberty? How did he learn to value individual liberty more than life itself?

Killing tool advocates don't seem to be disturbed by the senseless loss of life at the hands of people who use killing tools for their intended purpose. No, they are instead mentally disturbed at the mere suggestion of restrictions on their ability to own killing tools. Even the lives of twenty innocent children at Sandy Hook was not enough to move them to compassion for their fellow man.

I am not a Democrat but I love liberally. I feel sorrow every time one of these mass shootings happens. I feel sorrow when a person armed with a killing tool murders even one person. I am repulsed by the actions of groups like Open Carry Texas who carry weapons to Target and other public establishments. What are they trying to prove? That they're the good guys? It's not working. Good guys use weapons as public servants or to defend their families at home, not to install fear in fellow shoppers and diners.

I believe that killing tool violence in the United States of America is a dark, deadly symptom of a culture that places individual rights about life itself. One of the favorite phrases of killing tool lovers is from my cold, dead hands. What better evidence is there of misplaced priorities?

***************

Enough Already, Let's Learn Something This Time

The November issue of Readers Digest had an article called Finding and Stopping the Next Mass Shooter. A young man nicknamed "Trunk" was arrested eleven years ago with a military-grade rifle and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Fortunately, he was stopped before he committed a mass shooting. In prison, he had plenty of time to reflect and he provided some insight into the mindset of those who commit such evil acts. When he was in high school he thought no one liked him. He started thinking of other people as losers and of himself as special and powerful. He told himself he was an outcast. There were 14 guns in his home. His father, a member of the NRA, believed in "the God-given right to bear arms," which "fueled his thinking" that God wanted him to have a gun.

Near the end of the article, a man who works in a threat assessment unit of the FBI said that people like this need "alternatives to violence." Too many Americans think that there is no alternative to violence - that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. But today, anyone with a grievance and a weapon can easily become a bad guy.

I can't claim to have all the answers but I have come to the brilliant conclusion that our culture is really messed up. Our priorities are wrong. There is no "God given right" to bear arms - it is a man made right that is turning us against each other. The answer to violence is love and peace.