I haven't written in awhile. Sorry. I had planned to write a big political post around election time, but never got around to it.
Like most other Americans and people with souls, I'm fairly devastated by the tragic events that unfolded in Newtown, CT, last Friday. I watched the news unfold with tears and horror. I picked up my kindergartner from the bus that day with tears still in my eyes and a huge mommy hug. I don't know anyone in Newtown, but, like every other parent in America, I was brought to my knees with grief for their losses.
Ugh. I still can't watch the news with a dry eye. Peanut keeps teasing me to stop crying. I can't. I wish I could. I wish I could forget the images, either broadcast on the news or in my mind's overactive eye, but I can't. I will happily turn off the news when the questions become sensational, and have done so several times over the weekend. I have no use for that type of lurid curiosity or desire for momentary fame.
I've tried, as I'm sure everyone in America has, to wrap my head around this. I've failed. Miserably. What could possibly ever make someone kill their mother, then enter a grade school -- which has since come out as having no affiliation with the shooter's family -- and take the lives of so many innocent children, and so many more trying to save them?
We're all horrified and grieving and desperately seeking answers. Answers we will likely never find. If I believe my Facebook feed and shared articles, I would believe that the solution is three-pronged for this to never happen again:
- Gun control needs to be stronger.
- Mental illness needs to be addressed, desperately, in this country.
- Put God back in schools.
A lot of people are pointing the blame at gun control. Sorry, wrong answer. Mrs. Lanza had obtained her guns legally, in one of the toughest states to procure a gun. Her son got his hands on her legally owned guns anyway. And, in a bout of cruel irony, he killed her with at least one.
The founding fathers found some reason to include the right to bear arms in our Bill of Rights. I can respect that. Do I think the Second Amendment is antiquated? A bit. Do I think it needs removed and that all gun ownership should become illegal? No more so than I think the right to quarter troops should be removed. These guys were fucking brilliant. We've fucked up a lot since then. We've misinterpreted their intentions behind the Bill of Rights many times since then, but then, given enough time, we'll usually right the ship.
I've never owned and never shot a gun. I've never felt the need to do so. I lived on my own for a long time, often in not-so-safe areas of town, and I have not once felt the need to protect my person -- or my child -- with gunpower. A lot of gun advocates worry that I may be unprepared if I'm confronted with the business end of a gun. I'll deal with that if and when it happens. I don't feel it's the most likely of scenarios. In the meantime, I will continue to refuse to allow guns to be brought into and kept in my home. Should I feel the need to take up a hobby such as target shooting, I'll go to a shooting range and take out my aggressions that way. You know, legally.
Oh, and I have a reasonable amount of faith in our Supreme Court, Congress, and President that they won't actually remove the Second Amendment. As much as I disagree with them often, amending the Constitution isn't all that easy. Besides, taking the right to own a gun away from the American public won't remove them from society. Please, you can't be that naive to think that it will.
Moving on to mental illness, this may be the best part of the solution. So, the shooter had Asperger's Syndrome, a less-severe variant of autism. I'm not a psychologist, but I've witnessed the rise in diagnoses of these diseases over the last several years. I'm not about to argue their validity and existence, but the prevalence of diagnoses reminds me a lot of ADHD in the 1990's and 2000's. I have to question whether they're being overdiagnosed, or whether, as a nation, we really are that fucked up. And regardless, there seems to be no link between Asperger's and violent behaviors, at least in most cases.
Does this country need massive mental health reform? Absolutely. Should this incident be the battle cry for it? Absolutely not. Should mental health be readily available to every American? I certainly think it's unfair that it's most available to the wealthy and the destitute. Then again, I fall into the category of mentally ill (can't even remember the term for it; a variant of depression), and I choose not to treat it. But, like gun ownership, that's my right.
The fact is, apparently the shooter was mentally ill, and availed himself of his mother's legally owned guns. I do question her wisdom in keeping guns in her house while her mentally ill son lived there, as well, but I have to believe that she never thought she would see this kind of violence from him. The Greeks couldn't have written such an abhorrent tragedy.
So, that leaves putting "God back in school". I'm sorry, but no god belongs in public school. At the same time, please realize that the Christian God is not necessarily banned in school -- schools are merely prevented from forcing all students to participate in school-wide prayer and religious activities. Nowhere are students discouraged from praying, at least not by themselves. Before I embark upon a vitriolic diatribe against organized religion, in particular the Christian-based faiths, let me get back to the Constitution, that beautiful document drafted nearly 250 years ago. It basically says that the U.S. government should not establish a national religion, and that no citizen should be prevented from practicing their religion. Interpretation since the inception of the First Amendment has varied over the years, and better left to a Constitutional law class than what is rapidly becoming a treatise on the events in Newtown.
If you think that your god should be in school, please enroll your child immediately in a private school whose religious beliefs align with your own. Keep your god out of my child's school. At the same time, I can't imagine that there weren't prayers uttered on Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
I'm also a fixer and a doer; I seek action from tragedies such as this. In this case, I can think of nothing to do -- other than donate money, which I don't have. Or send a card or some memorial token to Newtown, where I know no one. That's not nearly as results-oriented as I would like. So let me offer this: if any grieving family member from Newtown wants or needs to make a fresh start, I'd be happy to open my home to you. It's a sincere offer.
Thoughts? Rants? Reactions?
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