Where do we go after the Shootings in Newtown?
At the one week anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, a community school, the church bells toll across the country, and the media satellite trucks slowly leave Newtown. Where will they go next? Will we as a nation continue to focus our attention on the epidemic of gun violence or has our addiction to violence grown so serious that we cannot even recognize it?
An impertinent reporter’s question made the evening news. Coverage did not include the president’s words that in the 5 days following the massacre, people had died all over this land each day: a police officer gunned down in Memphis leaving four children without their mother; two killed in Topeka; three people shot inside a hospital in Alabama; and a 4-year-old victim of a drive-by shooting in Missouri. “Where have you been?” we should ask ourselves. Where have the cameras gone since Newtown?
PBS New Hour shows in silence at the end of broadcasts the names and pictures, as “they became of available,” of military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. This week they showed in silence the names and pictures of those killed at Sandy Hook Elementary. What would it mean if every week they showed the names and pictures, as they became available, of those killed by gun violence in this nation?
To South Chicago? To Midwestern smaller cities? To the mountain states? Everywhere!
Our family lived for nine years in an inner city area in Connecticut, our children attending a community school. The school was at that time “legally condemned” which meant they did not have to provide a safe playground or music, the arts, physical education, etc. So we in the neighborhood worked together to provide these things for everyone’s children. While schools and school safety has increased in some places since then, the gap between the rich and the poor has intensified. Do you “move to a safe place where there are ‘good’ schools”? We’ve learned that gun violence happens everywhere. And we need good, safe community schools for everyone’s children wherever they live. President Obama has continued to say, “all children.”
We have to believe that this nation that has 5% of the world’s population and ½ the guns can change if we want to be an example in the world. We have to believe that we can cure ourselves from the epidemic of gun violence that plagues this country. And we can start, as President Obama said, with what the majority of Americans want, banning the sale of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips. He called on Congress to confirm the appointment of a director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, something they have refused to do for 6 ears.
Or we could go the other direction, buying bullet-proof backpacks for our children, arming teachers. Foolish! The epidemic grows. Fear begets fear.
And ads for semi-automatic weapons to the contrary, guns don’t make men more manly. The power to shoot more and faster does not make one stronger or wiser. Men also beget life. It’s not about shooting, but nurturing life. Can we shape communities of compassion and care, claiming together the blessed power of giving and preserving life, all life, everywhere? What will we see?