I may have accepted your condolences and prayers and claims of solidarity after the 23rd or the 76th or the 149th time… but not now.
—
I am grieving again today.
Once more I am mourning the senseless execution of beautiful souls torn to shreds in the prime of their lives and in the middle of their ordinary. I am grieving more premature funerals and canceled weddings and discarded futures—and I want to be alone right now.
Gun lover, please don’t tell me you’re grieving along with me today too. I just don’t think I want your company right now.
If you’re still against greater gun control measures—you don’t get to grieve with me today.
If you’re part of the zealous, gun-glorifying community—you don’t get to grieve with me today.
If you are a militant, unrepentant NRA apologist—you don’t get to grieve with me today.
If your right to bear arms ultimately matters more to you than the human wreckage strewn about the Umpqua campus (and schools and movie theaters and shopping malls and highways)—you don’t get to grieve with me today.
Not again. Not now. Not on the 264th mass shooting of the year in the US.
I may have accepted your condolences and prayers and claims of solidarity after the 23rd or the 76th or the 149th time… but not now.
If I do; if I allow you to bow your head with me and speak a quick prayer before moving on to the exact same posture and practice and politics, then it feels like I am just consenting to more murder. As a lover of life and person of faith I simply can’t do that in good conscience, and so I ask you to allow me to mourn in peace.
Words of sadness and offers of prayers alone are not significant enough now.
Any expression of grief that doesn’t come with an admission that guns, their easy availability, and (perhaps most importantly) a politically fueled Wild West culture that nurtures their worship are a central part of the problem here—rings hollow to me.
Any claim of mourning that doesn’t also demand some substantial change in how we promote, regulate, and talk about firearms is just crocodile tears and a slap in the face to families of the dead.
It all feels ultimately like selfishness to me.
If I have a pool in my open yard and kids keep drowning in it, yet I refuse to put up a fence, how much do I really value the loss of life?
And if I put up a fence and kids still keep getting in and dying and I don’t do more, how sincere is my grief?
And if, after what I believe to be my greatest human efforts to prevent it, my pool still fills with bodies, at some point shouldn’t my humanity kick in and determine that maybe, just maybe my desire to have a pool isn’t worth the carnage to the neighborhood?
When does my need to have a pool become the problem?
If I really give a damn about dead kids floating in my yard, maybe I leave the pools to the professionals.
I’m sorry, but the pool here is overflowing with blood and I’m tired of it.
I’m tired of a centuries-old amendment being propped up as relevant in any way to this time and place in history and them to the purpose it was ratified in the first place.
I’m tired of a John Wayne, “cold dead hand”, OK Corral romanticism that makes guns, not some necessary evil but a sexy status symbol of true Americans.
I’m tired of partisan media sky-is-falling, fear-mongering that makes people believe their imminent danger requires an arsenal always at the ready; in their kitchens and in their cars and at their ankles.
I’m tired of a culture that sees repeated mass shootings as the acceptable collateral damage of freedom.
I fully realize if you have fully bought into the lie that says gun are absolutely necessary, entirely neutral, and constitutionally guaranteed—you really don’t care about any of this.
You know the numbers and the statistics and the reality too, but you dismiss it all or rationalize why none of it is relevant. You’ve washed your hands of culpability in the continuing crime wave and exonerated guns and you don’t care to entertain conversation—which is your right.
I’m not going to demand that you conform to my convictions.
I’m not going to try and convince you of what seems so very obvious to me, but I’m also not going to allow you the courtesy of saying you mourn as I do and suffer alongside me, because that simply isn’t true:
You grieve gun violence while loving your guns. I grieve gun violence while abhorring guns.
We have a different idea of grief, you and me.
I respect your position, and reserve your right to mark this tremendous loss if you wish, but I ask that you kindly keep your distance right now because your presence is simply salt in these wounds.
So today, after yet another gun tragedy—please let me mourn in peace.
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Original article appeared at John Pavolvitz. Reprinted with permission.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
You took just about everything I said out of context Helen. You completely ignored my point about who uses automatic weapons and why they are not used in these mass shooting events. You disregarded the over time mass shootings in Chicago and read into it that I was denigrating black people when I said nothing of the sort. In short this is because what I said does not fit your script. I have no issue with disagreement as we all learn from it. But truly when I was trying to explain why things are different here in the US you… Read more »
As there has been ANOTHER mass shooting in the SIX DAYS since this article was published, I reiterate my support and my position.
California has very strict gun laws … hey bought the guns legally. Now what?
Disregard … the shooter I was referring to was the CA shooters
Bro had some excellent points about emotion overruling rational thought and discourse. Emotions drive the engagement but reason will move toward solutions. In most of these knee jerk reactions are usually a host of unintended consequences that makes the end results worse than the original problems. I’m going to post my response to Helen here because it’s a message I think needs to be heard. Up in the middle No one will see it because I’d guess most everybody just goes to the bottom to see if there is more posted. It would be nice if this site had a… Read more »
Great rhetoric Mark, because if I disagree with you I’m automatically a namby pamby liberal white knight. However I do disagree with you, and frankly your language makes it sound like you are talking in a derogatory way about black people. Which is even more laughable when every single one of these shooters has been white (or in Elliot Rodgers case) Asian.
So do people who contribute to ozone action days (which is just about everybody in the “Western” world) get to grieve when people die of heart attacks, strokes, etc.? What about people who use electricity? Should they not be allowed to grieve over coal miner’s deaths? What about if you bought your clothes overseas and the garment factory collapsed? We going to start telling these people that they’re complicit in these deaths? If you don’t, you’re not really talking about your pool. You’re talking about your neighbor who never invites you over’s pool.
With all due respect, I am disgusted by the tone of your article. You ask for peace, yet alienate those who have beliefs different from yours; how does hatred bring about good results? You blindly reject any and every gum supporter without blinking an eye, as if that were the only quality a person has to offer. I understand the strong emotions behind your post, but those are the very emotions that lead to mass shootings in the first place. No one ever solves violence with hatred; in fact, hatred creates violence. If you truly wanted to put an end… Read more »
Then can you please tell me WHY you write this? If we are not allowed to grieve with you then you have no interest in being with us at even at the article level. So why in the world would you even start that conversation with those you want to cut off at the knees? Makes no sense to me but I’m sure there was a purpose to you. Mainly I think to shame those who might not agree with you or if they don’t certainly aren’t worthy of your presence in feelings. That’s not really good John, for you… Read more »
Thank you for your graceful, heartfelt words that speak to mine own heart. Thank you for saying what you have said. Thank you for saying it without being hateful but with just being in pain. Thank you for your eloquence. Thank you for sharing your gift of writing. Thank you.
This author was never permitted to grieve with me. I refuse to allow liars and fools in my circle of respect and this author is both. Gun control does not work, has never worked and never will work, this has been proven so many times it’s impossible to count them. I am tired of the same old BS constantly spat by enemies of the US Constitution, who throw out fully debunked stats and outright lies.
No, I will not be grieving with you today, or any day, and you will never be allowed to grieve with me, traitor.
Chris, I am sick and tired of people like you claiming that anyone who advocates for common sense gun laws are “enemies of the Constitution.” The Framers NEVER envisioned the assault weapons used today. You want to keep and bear arms? Keep as many muskets as you like! Secondly, the Framers also wrote the beginning of the 2nd amendment: “A Well Regulated Militia”. How are gun owners “well regulated?” Isn’t it convenient that the #NRA controlled gun lobby has distorted the original intent of the Amendment? And how sad that so many uneducated Americans blindly believe the lies of the… Read more »
Thank you for this wonderful, thoughtful article. Reducing available access to guns = reduces mass murder. As proven by Australia. I am disappointed that another commenter mentioned mental illness in the context of gun violence. While the issue is multi faceted, the majority of people with mental health problems are non violent. Equally, while poor mental health provision is a problem in most countries, a psychotic with a knife will demonstrably do less damage than a psychotic with a gun.
Gun control did not work in Australia, even David Hemmenway said “we don’t know” when he was asked if Australia’s gun laws worked.
Australia haven’t had a mass shooting since 1996.
Britain has had one since 1996 (Derrick Bird, in 2010).
There have been 351 mass shooters in the USA in 2015 alone.
I know correlation and causation aren’t the same, but it is still true that guns can cause a great deal of damage. In this case, multiple deaths and injuries.
I wish, as a UK citizen, I could wrap my head around why guns are so important to some Americans.
Guns in particular are not the issue Helen, the culture is. Britain and Australia are two very very different places than America. It is NOT a gun culture here in particular. Yes guns are a part of us here but too the vast majority of us we don’t think of carrying nor of using in a mass shooting much less an individual.
I don’t think any tool (such as a gun) is inherently evil. I do think that when you live in a country that has seen 351 mass shootings in one year, gun control is not just appropriate, it’s necessary. Part of being a government is weighing up conflicting desires within the population. If one group is saying they want assault rifles because reasons / 2nd amendment, and the other is saying we want gun control because we’d like to not be murdered, then the second group should win top trumps. I know it’s not a cut and dried issue. Racism,… Read more »
Part of the problem Helen is that automatic rifles such as the AK47 is Not only NOT used in these mass shootings they cannot be owned by anyone here in the states. They can’t be sold but the media and anti gun folks want you to believe that’s what is being used. Any rifle used is a semi auto. One pull per shot on the trigger. The guns used in the mass killings in Chicago 440 so far this year are all generally 9mm pistols and revolvers. Automatics are here of course and used by terrorists and drug gangs. But… Read more »
In Switzerland every man has a gun.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/switzerland.asp
Every man is part of the militia and is trained. It seems to work.
Yes, however, from the same source: “A list of countries by firearm-related death rate shows Switzerland as having 6.4 firearm deaths per 100,000 population per year, a figure considerably lower than in the United States (10.27) but *higher than a number of other countries.*”
@ Helen
I wonder though. How many were mass killings. Isn’t one of the arguments against gun control that a person with a knife is less likely to be able to kill 20 people than a person with a gun. If a person only tries to kill one person the effectiveness level becomes a lot more similar. The question is are we really comparing apples to apples?
But your point here is illogical to make. I don’t see what you’re trying to say. Most mentally ill people are not mass murders. True. But most mass murderers are mentally ill. Is that a fair statement? And you also don’t cite Switzerland’s rate to be correlated to mass shooting or crimes of passion. Two totally different things. If they were of passion and guns were disallowed completely as in NO guns then the deaths per million would be by knife or hammer or whatever.
This piece seems to be an attempt to dehumanize a political opponent; to suggest that someone’s political beliefs somehow prevent them from sharing in human grief and human emotion.
As such it is terribly disappointing.
What about all the people killed each year by police and Federal Agents? Why does no one ever speak about the “gun violence” they inflict, or do their deaths not count?
“Any claim of mourning that doesn’t also demand some substantial change in how we promote, regulate, and talk about firearms is just crocodile tears and a slap in the face to families of the dead.”
Continue to concentrate on the “gun” and completely ignore mental illness. Is it any wonder why men are in the state they’re in?
And how many of those shooters were on LEGALLY prescribed drugs? Maybe that is the real problem.
So what are you doing to take the illegal guns off the streets of Chicago? Chicago, which has some of the strongest gun laws in the country yet has some of the highest gun murder rates in the country? What say you to the Chicago politicians, that because of their ineffectiveness a 9 year old boy was ambushed, murdered as retaliation?