Yesterday I had a very good day at work. My kids were nice to each other, they shared
their toys willingly, they cleaned up when they were done, and I left feeling
very good about working with small children.
Some days are just like that.
Then I turned on the radio and heard the first reports
coming out of Newtown, Connecticut. They
mentioned 18 dead school children and it hit me like a hammer blow. I started crying and couldn’t stop for a long
time. I pictured someone coming into my
school and intentionally shooting my kids and I was dumbstruck. How could anyone put bullets in innocent
children? This man didn’t just spray
bullets randomly. He executed those poor
children.
My first instinct was to call my wife, but she is in Israel
and out of phone contact, so I e-mailed her instead and continued to cry as I
listened to radio coverage of the massacre.
My next instinct was to get on Facebook and rail against guns. Whenever this sort of mass killing happens,
it is just about always with a gun. You rarely
see massacres carried out by a knife-wielding killer or a machete-carrying
madman. Semi-automatic handguns and
rifles make it easy to shoot a lot of people in a short time without having to
get close to them. If these guns were
rare and difficult to procure legally, there would be fewer mass
shootings. That is a fact.
About an hour after I heard the news, Erica managed to
borrow a phone in Israel and she called me, distraught and teary. Our conversation soon got to the question on
my mind: “what can we do to stop this shit?”
I know deeply in my heart that America is a society with an unhealthy
fascination with both guns and violence.
We ban buttocks on tv but allow grisly scenes of violence. You can’t say “shit” over the airwaves but
you can show blood-soaked victims lying on the floor of any weeknight drama or
police procedural.
I also know deeply in my heart that the Founding Fathers
really did intend for citizens to be able to own guns as a defense against
tyranny. However, I also feel pretty
certain they did not mean for this right to bear arms to be unregulated. The most advanced killing technology at the
time of the writing of the US Constitution was all single-shot. There were cannon, howitzers, mortars, and
muskets and all had to be reloaded after each shot fired. Second Amendment radicals today argue that
any regulation of firepower or magazines is unconstitutional. This argument is ridiculous. If you take it to its most absurd length you
end up arguing for the right of citizens to own anti-aircraft guns and
shoulder-launched missiles. Is that
REALLY what the Second Amendment protects?
One thing I can do in response to the tragic waste of life
in Newtown is to contact local, state, and national lawmakers and push for
meaningful regulation of gun purchases and magazine capacities available to
civilians. If you add together all of the gun murders in the 23 wealthiest
countries of the world, fully 87% of the children killed are in the United
States. What does this say about
us? I do not have much faith in the
politicians of this country to take any sort of meaningful legislative stance
against the gun lobby, but I feel like I need to express myself to them
anyway. Maybe THIS time the horror of
what happened will be enough to give lawmakers the spine needed to buck the
NRA? I doubt it, but remaining silent
will make it that much less likely.
I am realizing this morning that the most effective and, in
the short term, least satisfying action I can take is to respond to the people
around me with love and respect. The
common traits these shooters seem to share are an overpowering wish to be seen
and a desire to feel powerful. With a
gun in hand, they feel like God. And
with the wall-to-wall coverage, they are certainly seen. I do not believe anyone I know right now is a
potential mass murderer. But people who
knew Adam Lanza, James Holmes, Dylan Klebold, or other shooters probably would
have said the same thing. It is not an
easy thing to do, but I can work hard to respond to the people I meet each day
with love and kindness.
In the end, that is really all most of us can do. As President Obama mentioned in his short
statement yesterday, we can hug our children, tell them we love them, and then put
politics aside and work to make further tragedies like this less likely. The work I feel that I can do is simply to
be more compassionate with people I meet every day. Beyond that, I feel lucky to have a job that
allows me to help 3-year olds learn how to deal with anger and frustration
every day. It is part of my job
description to love small children and listen to them, and, while listening. to
help them deal with the frustrations that arise from living in a world where
you don’t always get your way.
Maybe that makes me lucky.
I have a way to respond to this tragedy that feels real and immediate
and effective. When I get to work Monday
morning you can bet I will have a bit more patience and a much deeper
appreciation for each of the young lives I touch. My hope is that those with different jobs,
like Representatives, Senators, and the President, will also step up and do
what their jobs allow them to do. They
are elected to carry out the will of the People, and the People want to live in
a society where massive firepower is harder to acquire and our children are
safe at school.
