I don't think the world is ending in four days, but people are certainly acting like it.
A few days after a guy shot up a movie theater in Colorado this past July, my brother and I went to see that same film at Clackamas Town Center in Oregon. For someone that enjoys frequent solo dates to the movies, I underwent a certain amount of anxiety that evening. I treated everyone as a potential threat-monitoring the subtle moves of others in the theater. Why did they get up and leave? Are they going to refill their already extra large popcorn or are they coming back to spray the theater with bullets? Should we leave before that happens? I always feel safer with my big brother, so unless he moved, I felt we would probably be okay.
Five months later, no more than a few hundred feet from that theater in Clackamas Town Center, a guy did walk in with an automatic rifle and killed 2 people and himself. My big brother was again there, but not seeing 'The Dark Knight Rises' with his little sister. He was helping people evacuate a terrifying situation and I'm sure they too felt safer by having him there.
Two days after that a guy wakes up on the other side of the country and murders his mom then heads to an elementary school to spend the last moments of his life killing 6 adults and 20 children. In an elementary school.
Movie Theater.
Mall.
School.
I spend a significant amount of time in each of these places.
I have no control over these types of things happening. I can't confine myself to my apartment and wait months for movies to be released to Netflix, or do all of my holiday shopping via Amazon, or not go to work and make a living. I can't live in fear. I refuse to live in fear. And I actually like people; I smile at them as I pass, compliment them on something they are doing or wearing, or have a conversation with people within my proximity while waiting in lines or sitting at adjacent tables at the coffee shop.
The day after the Clackamas shooting, I was grocery shopping with my niece. She was pushing her mini-cart along asking her Aunt T-T what else we needed, when an older man stopped to chat.
"My wife says they tend to eat better when they are involved in the shopping."
At this point, Olivia was between the man and me. Before responding, I quickly made myself the in between [wo]man, shielding Olivia from this probably okay stranger. We chatted quickly and Olivia and I continued shopping. Nothing happened. Everything was fine. But the way I treated that stranger wasn't in the normal way that Teela once had; he was near my niece and I was going to protect her from his nonexistent threat.
We are currently in a hypersensitive state and have climbed up and firmly placed our feet on our Facebook soap boxes and once there, have written paragraph upon paragraph about gun control. On one feed their gun control discussion went from that to abolishing slavery; the analogies have been ridiculous and endless:
"Are we going to get rid of cars since there are drunk drivers?"
"Are we going to get rid of knives since people can kill with those?"
First, all of these items have a primary purpose. The former, to travel from destination A to B, sometimes to C. The misuse of the car would be when a drunk driver operates that vehicle. The latter would be that we use knives to slice strawberries and to cut carrots. When a knife is misused, it can kill someone. But that's not the primary purpose of my butcher knife; I'm making dinner.
When we look at guns, what is the primary purpose? To kill. Whether you are hunting in the woods or chasing a bad guy, you shoot to kill. Even if you are shooting for "fun" at a gun range...what is that target shaped as? A coffee cup? An iPhone? No it's a sketch of a human being and you are aiming for that human's head. Their heart. There is no other purpose of a gun, like there are for my knives and our cars. That is a fact.
We have this second amendment right to protect our property and family. The not-so-subtle subtext of protect would mean that there is a potential threat and that threat would be answered with your gun. The reason these analogies that people are reaching for fail, is because there aren't enough common like things between guns and cars and guns and knives. These commonalities must exist in order for an analogy to carry any power. That's how an analogy works.
[Don't worry. I am not going to discuss gun control, there's enough of that at your reading disposal]
The deeper issue we should not just be having a conversation about but doing something about, is treatment. How are we treating each other? How are we treating that child who shows signs of mental illness? Will we continue to only care when another tragedy transpires and discuss them as "off" or a "loner" instead of being proactive? Are we helping and giving adequate attention to them, or handing them a pharmaceutical drug as a way to curb their tendencies? Are we ostracizing them at school and in cyberspace? Parents, if you can't do it yourself, seek help. There is no shame in talking to a professional and asking for help. If that thought brings you shame, I'm confident that it is more manageable than the shame in the aftermath of a mass shooting. That is if you are not the first victim and live to remember the story.
One of the most powerful things I have heard from one of the grieving fathers that lost his sweet little Emilie was about whether he felt anger toward the man who took his daughter's life. He said, "From what we've learned he was someone that was struggling with something that was very, very dark and something that he struggled with mightily. He struggled with something different than the struggles I have in my life and so I can't have any judgement toward him for those things he might have been fighting."
I don't think it was time for his sweet Emilie's story to end. Nor was it for Grace, Benjamin, Noah, Josephine, Olivia and their classmates.
We have to do better.
Obama speaking at Vigil
