Note: As an author, and as a person, considering the nature of this incident, I don’t particularly feel like finding pictures related to the shooting. The words below are a brief summary of my thoughts on the incident, and are affiliated only with myself.
I am sure many of you have heard of the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting that occurred last week. In case you haven’t, here is a brief rundown: December 14, a 20 year old individual shot and killed his mother – an elementary school teacher – before going to the school his mother taught at, where he killed 20 children and six staff members. After this, the gunman killed himself.
Now, there is obviously a lot to say about this tragedy, and of course, we must focus on remembering the truly heroic acts of the teachers who died defending their students, not to mention the innocent children. Something that hit me really hard was the age of these kids – none were older than seven years old. Think about that for a second… Six, seven years old. At that age, no parent should be worrying about anything more than a scrape their kid might get from going too high on the swings and falling off. Parents should not be fearing that their kids are being faced with a gun, which brings me to my first point: why were these guns so readily available?
Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Sandy Hook. These are places across the United States, but what is the commonality? They all fell victim to shootings, all at the hands of individuals who were later deemed to be mentally unstable. This does not even begin to touch the daily shootings, the back alleys, the robbers, etc., where countless thousands needlessly suffer similar fates. The question is, who is really at blame here, the shooter, or the system? Now, don’t get me wrong, by no means am I absolving the shooters of all blame. What I will say, however, is that each of these individuals had clear issues with sociability, and should not have had such easy access to guns.
The problem is, however, that despite all of our posturing, what happens all too often is an evolution of internet “Slacktivism.” During the immediate aftermath of such tragedies, there is an outpouring of support and outrage, but this usually simmers down in a month or so. Does life go on? Yes. Does that mean that we can leave the problem as is, and pretend that it won’t happen again? By no means. As the age old adage says, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Despite all of the outcry, there has been very little tangible change in gun regulations. Some will argue that it is their constitutional right to bear arms, and while there is a fine balance between individual liberties and security, really? I do not understand the sentiment that the more guns that are allowed, the safer a place is. Let’s look at some numbers (all courtesy of the United Nations Office on Drug & Crime). The Canadian intentional homicide rate per 100 000 people: 1.6 murders. Germany? 0.8. 1.2 in the United Kingdom, and the same for Egypt. The Americans? They’re looking at 4.2 murders per 100 000 people. The difference here? Stricter gun regulations.
Thing is, statistics can only go so far. As I mentioned earlier, there has been little tangible change, and this can be attributed in part to the individual reluctance to relinquish firearms. The sad part is if the Second Amendment were to be interpreted as it was initially meant to be, “legal” guns would include, exclusively, muskets. I question how someone can rationally argue that taking away his or her guns takes away from his or her liberty, when we are clearly seeing that guns often take away the right to LIVE, quite literally.
To me, this seems illogical, irrational, paranoid, and blatantly false; if one were to look at the predominant trends in terms of crime rates across the globe, he or she would see that nations with stricter gun control have citizens that are just as happy and just as free. Therefore, mourning the devastating losses cannot be where we stop. Changes must be made, and they must be made before another person who clearly isn’t thinking straight steals the lives of innocents. It gives me hope that President Obama recognizes this, and I can only hope that as the United States moves forward, it jumps to the 21st century with regards to gun control, too.
Now, rewinding for a sec, and I will try to keep this bit a little shorter to save you on the reading. In my opinion, too often in the case of a mass murderer, the news outlets and social media focuses on the murderer. Keep in mind that there are irrational people, and the type of person that would open fire on an ELEMENTARY school falls into that category. Historically, many of the people that are the perpetrators of these actions are seeking notoriety or attention. As I mentioned earlier, we can’t 100% blame them – the mind is a messed up, twisted maze of neurons and receptors, and it isn’t something we can always control all that well. So rather than talking about these shooters so much, let’s think of the people who truly deserve mention. Six faculty members died, many of them while protecting their students and hiding them. Victoria Soto died shielding her students from the bullets. Dawn Hochsprung, principal, was the first to take action when gunshots were heard in the office. These are the people that should be remembered from this incident. Now think of those kids. They had birthdays, graduations, jobs, marriages, a lifetime of opportunity ahead, and it was thrown away. Think of their parents, losing a child, and losing that child so young, when he or she still had that perma-smile. THESE are the people that should be remembered.
I am not trying to make a political statement here, I couldn’t care less for the politics behind this all. I just feel that lives should not be thrown away so easily, especially such obviously kind lives and lives with so much potential. It is difficult to recognize when someone is suppressing his or her emotional state, and thus, it is so so so dangerous to allow almost anyone to carry a gun. The other problem is the attention we give to the shooters. It has been less than a week, and media has pretty much provided a biography on the perpetrator. Some people in this world are twisted and will do anything for attention, even if it is posthumous. We cannot choose to enable this attitude, it is imperative that we grieve the losses of mothers and brothers, sons and daughters, nephews, nieces, and friends. But beyond grieving, we must move towards a better society – a society where walking around with an automatic rifle is NOT legal, and a society where students can feel safe going to school. Petitions can be signed, and letters written, but the key is that change MUST be made, before we have another such tragedy on our hands.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.