A year ago, on June 19, in one interval between the appalling series of mass shootings, President Obama offered consoling words to the devastated families of Charleston, South Carolina (9 dead), as he had to the families of Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 and on myriad times during his tenure as our country’s leader. Each time he has spoken to those most affected, a dispirited country, and to a dubious, eavesdropping world. After the Newtown atrocity the tempered phrase that resonated most hinted at next steps following, yet another, unacceptable calamity. In response to this tragedy, the President declared that as a nation we needed to take some: “…meaningful action…”. After the Charleston tragedy he simply used the impotent, imploring words: “…we must do something…”
What does this mean?
Since Charleston, South Carolina, June 19, 2015, (9 dead) there have been mass shootings in: Chattanooga, Tennessee, July 16, 2015, (5 dead, 3 wounded), Roseburg, Oregon, October 1, 2015, (9 dead, 9 wounded), Colorado Springs, Colorado, November 29, 2015, (3 dead, 9 wounded), San Bernadino, California, December 2, 2015 (14 dead, 21 wounded). And once again – the latest carnage at a night club in Orlando, Florida, this morning, June 12, 2016 (at least 50 dead, 53 wounded), the most deadly mass shooting in U.S. history.
Between 1984 and 2015 there were shootings in Isla Vista, California (6 dead, 7 wounded), Fort Hood, Texas, second time at this locale (3 dead, 16 wounded), Washington D.C. (12 dead, 3 wounded), Santa Monica, California (5 dead), Newtown Connecticut, (27 dead, 1 wounded), Brookfield, Wisconsin, (3 dead, 4 wounded), Minneapolis, Minnesota, (6 dead, 2 wounded),
Oak Creek, Wisconsin, (6 dead, 3 wounded), Aurora, Colorado, (12 dead, 58 wounded), Oakland, California, (7 dead, 3 wounded), Seal Beach, California, (8 dead, 1 wounded), Tucson, Arizona, (6 dead, 11 wounded), Manchester, Connecticut, (8 dead, 2 wounded), Huntsville, Alabama, (3 dead, 3 wounded), Fort Hood, Texas (13 dead, 32 wounded), Binghamton, New York (13 dead, 4 wounded), Decalb, Illinois, (5 dead, 16 wounded), Omaha, Nebraska, (8 dead, 4 wounded), Blacksburg, Virginia, (32 dead, 17 wounded), Salt Lake City, Utah, (5 dead, 4 wounded), Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, (5 dead, 5 wounded), Goleta, California (6 dead), Red Lake Indian Reservation, Minnesota, (9 dead, 7 wounded), Meridian, Mississippi, (5 dead, 9 wounded), Tucson, Arizona, (3 dead), Santee, California, (2 dead, 13 wounded), Wakefield, Massachusetts, (7 dead), Honolulu, Hawaii, (7 dead), Fort Worth, Texas, (7 dead, 7 wounded), Atlanta, Georgia, (9 dead, 12 wounded), Columbine, Colorado, (13 dead, 24 wounded), Jonesboro, Arkansas, (5 dead, 10 wounded), Garden City, New York, (6 dead, 19 wounded), San Francisco, (8 dead, 6 wounded), Olivehurst, California, (4 dead, 10 wounded), Iowa City, Iowa, (4 dead, 2 wounded), Killeen, Texas, (22 dead, 20 wounded), Jacksonville, Florida, (10 dead, 4 wounded), Stockton, California, (5 dead, 29 wounded), Edmond, Oklahoma, (14 dead, 6 wounded), San Ysidro, California, (21 dead, 19 wounded).
Recently, a shooting at UCLA ended the productive life of Professor William Klug before gunman, Mainak Sarkar, turned the weapon upon himself, having already shot his wife, Ashley Hasti outside Minneapolis. The Los Angeles Times reported City Councilman, Paul Koretz as saying: “We’re at a point in this country where there’s some kind of small massacre every day, somewhere.” (June 1, 2016, Sarah Parvini, Kate Mather, Hailey Branson-Potts)
There is a pause between bloodbaths, affording the horrific opportunity to add to the carnage, have lives ended abruptly with all the warning of lighting on a sunny day. It’s one thing to accept mortality, that all lives end. It’s quite another to hasten or even court it by refusing to alter our behavior and pandering to a politically powerful minority. We can do better. We must.
After Newtown, meaningful action might have implied that we, as a country of conscious citizens, should react to this horror, in combination with a litany of other horrors, by adjusting our existing “policy” with regard to the dissemination and possession of weaponry unsuitable for recreation. Using the word “something” sounds more like a desperate prayer. The sort that is made to a higher power for intercession of a benevolent sort when one is in a foxhole or awaiting a firing squad. Divine intervention? More like a wake up wish to a country slipped into a coma.
Meaningful action was a carefully constructed, nearly British in understatement, expression of intent. These words implied, ‘Come on, Folks. Let’s not just stand around with our thumbs up our behinds. Let’s do something!’ But it was a vague utterance, nonspecific, likely intended that way.
For one thing, there’s The Second Amendment in The Constitution with which to contend. Trying to figure this one out will be like discussing scripture at the Scopes Monkey Trial. The Pious vs The Parablists vs The Pragmatists. Verus, verus, verus, pulling against one another so that nothing gets settled until the next time a pride of innocents gets shot down.
Our revered United States Constitution’s Bill Of Rights stipulates: “The right of the People to keep and bear arms,” adopted 15, December, 1791. A provision, to help protect home and property, prevent tyranny, a rise or takeover from any single group or faction such as a dictator or military. After the attempted assassination of then President Ronald Reagan, and the paralyzing shot to his aide, James Brady on March 30, 1981, The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was introduced and signed on November 30, 1993 going into effect in February 1994. In 2008 and 2010 the Supreme Court issued two Second Amendment clarifications restricting and more closely defining an individual’s right to bear a firearm for traditional and law abiding purposes.
So that truth, though seemingly self evident, took 12 to 13 years to make real. And the reason for this is partially our government’s enviable system of checks and balances. But it is also a survivalist quirk of our human psychology. Rationalization and denial, two tip-top defense mechanisms, that keep us from focusing on the nasty issue that might eclipse our quotidian existence: mortality. Not focusing on this fact helps us get on with our lives. Ironically, it may likewise shorten them. This because, although realization, like love at first sight, hits with a blinding light, it likewise does not remain. Epiphany fades. To wit, although, we may have been prepared to make positive changes in our lives on December 31, resolved to improve, our intentions waned and weakened by February. This year, let’s maintain our resolve.
Keeping in mind that The Second Amendment is not imbedded in the Fourteenth Amendment, owning and using a weapon is not, then, a personal right of the people. The state and local governments are permitted to enact any sort of gun legislation seen fit and proper.
What does “The Right To Bear Arms” mean? Arms could be interpreted many ways. Would it, for instance, be acceptable for me to stop in to a munitions bakery and order a white box with three layers of yellow cake Uranium tied neatly with a red string? How about having some bright green plutonium at the ready in my linen closet next to the sundries? Why not? Might there be a concern that I might confuse it with Prell shampoo? Perhaps things like, Agent Orange, Napalm, Drones, Atomic Submarines, 4-Loco, Nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction could be available to anyone following a 3-day wait.
Weapons such as the ones used in Sandy Hook Elementary School were military grade. There is no conventional need or purpose for private citizens to own and utilize semi-automatic weapons, Glocks, or stock piles of ammunition. This sort of weaponry is excessive for the sportiest hunting enthusiast in obtaining a deer for the season. Ditto for ducks and bears. These guns are intended for destroying human beings…period.
Arguments could and should be made regarding our need for these “tools” to be in the hands of trained commandos. We need to discuss, once again, the futility of force for anything other than a last resort of self-defense. Gandhi, Dr. King, Jesus, and other civilized individuals of note have observed that violence is not persuasive. Death ends the argument, for a while, but it inflames and illustrates that acts of violence end the argument…only for a moment, and thus perpetuates the same.
Perhaps when the Founding Fathers delineated The Right To Bear Arms, they were thinking in terms of a saber, musket, or blunderbuss. Even back in the Revolutionary day, not many private citizens were carting cannons or cruising the shorelines in private battleships.
Personally, I am not much for hunting game, but many families feed their own from the forests around us. Many hunt for sport, for the fun of tracking and killing animals. This speaks to the problem at hand but is not, in fact, the subject, per se. Our primitive urges, instincts, and traditions are likely part of this, but the real issue, for now, is with a very powerful gun lobby that wields its wealth and power much like a semi-automatic weapon, mowing down politicians and anyone else who speaks against its agenda, that of buying and selling weaponry as an American right. Hunters trying to bag a stag for the family need not, use a Glock with a stock of ammo at the ready. Fisher folk don’t drop depth charges to see what will float up. Put in the parlance of the activity, where’s the sport in that?
And let us not be confused by the utterances of agenda-driven gun lobbyists or survivalists. “The Right To Bear Arms” Amendment does not include the nuke du jour. Acting with premeditated extreme prejudice is happening with the rapid fire of the guns being leveled. It’s overdue and too late but we need to admit that Newtown is the new normal for all until and unless we acknowledge that we are mortal. Everyone one of us will die someday. As my father used to say, “There’s no cure for this. Just a delay.” Let’s delay our demise and that of our children by not calling killing machines, recreational. This is a good time for us to act together and give a positive spin to the phrase “gun shy.” That would, indeed, prove a meaningful action.
