It's a question that
often gets asked at a time like this. During a crisis or tragedy it's a natural
thing to do when there are so few answers. People find it hard to understand
violence of any scale, but particularly on the scale of recent memory. You would
think that it would be easy to understand given that so much of it happens on a
regular basis. We wish it didn't and we wish it was really simple to
understand. So much so that we polarize issues of violence into simple terms.
The problem is one thing or another. Unfortunately, as with most things related
to violence it just isn't that easy.
A lot of talk has
started to go around about how we prevent tragedy's such as this from happening
in the future, and it is now that we should talk about it and implement things.
Where I think a lot of the talk is failing is in the single solution syndrome
that develops. Things like 'If only we had tougher gun laws this wouldn't have
happened' or 'We need to do more for the mentally ill and that will fix the
problem'. In reality, I think that both are necessary to really make any type
of difference in the world and much of the arguments that happen after a
tragedy such as this are over which should come first.
Perhaps that is why
nothing ever really gets resolved when it comes to the issue of guns and
violence and mental illness, because in our rush to help the victims we end up
forgetting the victims in the process. We are so focused on what can be done to
stop more victims from occuring that we have stopped worrying about the people
who are already victims of this type of violence. We brush it off as if to say
'The police and rescue workers and psychiatrists and the government will step
in and help the victims so we don't need to think about them anymore, they are
going to be okay' and then jump into political mode and start pushing our cause
over another.
The politics of the
situation are the problem that keep us from moving forward on this. We are so
quick to take a political position on the subject that we force people to
disagree with us rather then actually deal with the problem at hand. This isn't
an issue of gun control or mental illness or more religion versus less religion
in schools, it's a question of how we deal with tragedy. By which I mean we
don't deal with it. In the age of the 24 hour news cycle we have over
intellectualized tragedy, even among those who claim not to be intellectuals.
We're so quick to analyze and discuss a problem so that we can put it in the
proper context that we forget the most important context of all, the fact that
people have died.
To point to an
example that's fresh in my mind, a conversation arose not long after the
tragedy in Newton, CT about why we are not focused on the victims instead of
calling for gun control or mental health reform and a number of people came out
in favor of gun control as a way of helping the victims. One person even went
so far as to say that the best way to honor the victims was to push the tragedy
in the faces of people who advocate for guns to show them the error of their
ways. It was compared to when a dog craps on the rug.
Does that sound to
you like someone who is concerned about the victims and not the political
agenda they adhere to? I understand that it was well intentioned. I understand
that gun control will help the situation. What I don't understand is why that
analogy is at the forefront of someone's mind after a tragedy such as this has
occurred. That, to me, is a problem. More of a problem then gun control, more
of a problem then mental health reform, more than the media's coverage or the
lack of religion in school. The idea that these people are not victims of a
tragedy they are examples to be used for whatever political ideal a person is
trying to put forward.
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