Why Don’t We Do Something?
There has been a deadly school shooting today, in Uvalde, Texas. The shooter was 18 and the 14 children who were murdered by guns were…
There has been a deadly school shooting today, in Uvalde, Texas. The shooter was 18 and the 14 children who were murdered by guns were between seven and ten years of age. There was a teacher shot as well.
It’s astounding to me how this keeps happening. It makes sense that it keeps happening because this country loves its guns and we don’t seem to have a great deal of emotional regulation or mental health support or community support or the collective will to stop this from happening.
People are doing things. The title of this piece may seem misleading. There are a lot of activists fighting very hard to shift culture and to shift laws, even though the fight back seems overwhelming. But what I think most of us see is a bunch of nothing. Politicians “praying” and gun lobbyists denying guns are the problem, media pundits claiming it’s too soon to talk about legislation and conspiracy theorists claiming it’s all a false flag.
I knew when nothing significant was done after Sandy Hook that we were lost. Hell, I knew it years before that. I try, very hard, to keep my progressive chin up, because I want to think our culture could choose to be better than all this, but I’m feeling pretty daunted.
Covid denialism is mainstream now, with cases clearly rising but not being reported (or being so hidden on a website as to not appear not reported), the climate has done near tipped, and we are just ok with guns.
Guns. Guns. Guns.
They are a symbol of death. They are designed to kill or maim enough so that you can keep on shooting. That’s why they exist. To kill or maim or threaten.
We can’t seem to give them up because there is some other belief about them, one that I don’t really understand that guns mean freedom. So freedom means death maybe? Freedom from death by causing death? Freedom to sell guns to threaten death that death makes money to make money and make more guns?
This seems like the most honest thing I’ve ever read
My Twitter feed is filled with people posting right now. Crying out into the wilderness that is social media but this post said everything I feel in my heart right now.
That’s totally how it feels to me too. And that my idea of “for the better” is so alien to the other half of the country that I don’t know how to even function. Less guns, more social services. Less sexual assault, more acceptance of sexuality. Less war, more art. Less Covid. More policies on science. Less racism and more safety, emotional and otherwise. That’s how I see “for the better.”
Less children killed by guns, by people wielding guns, by people in the grip of the desire to go out and kill children with guns.
That we cannot rally around that? We seem utterly lost. What can I do? What am I not doing enough of? What love am I not sharing? What collective understanding of goodness, health, social support, enough food, housing, clothing, kindness, community is missing?
These were babies. What have we done? And what are we supposed to do?