Friday, December 14, 2012

Tragedy

Today is an awful day.

Forgive me for being a little disjointed with this - normally when there's a topic I'd like to bring up on here I think about it for a little while to get my words in order.  Please also forgive me if in the hours after I post this the facts change as the picture becomes clearer. I feel like I need to dump some of my thoughts out and you all are, after all, my wonderful, loving diary.

I'm sure everyone knows about this already but just in case there's one person reading this who doesn't, this morning in Connecticut, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 26 people, at least 18 of which were elementary school children.

I am by no means a Connecticut expert, I've been there only a few times.  The best lady friend, Kali, is from this particular town, and apparently Mr. T's sister-in-laws nieces and nephews go to this school.  From the little I do know of this particular area,  this having happened there is one of those events that reminds you it could happen anywhere.  The wealth, education, political leanings, population, and usual safety of any given town is in no way a predictor of whether or not something like this can happen there.  It could happen anywhere.

In a lot of ways this is a wonderful, amazing world with a lot of love and light in it.  In other ways, it's a disturbing, terrible place where the creatures who run it are the most violent and unpredictable imaginable.  It's both.  It will always be both.  It's hard on days like these to not think of the world as a body - as long as there are a few sick and twisted cells, the entire body will be sick.

You have to be dead inside to do something like this.  Our tendency as a society is to of course think to ourselves "how could someone do something like this?" because most of us, however strong or weak they may be, still have feelings and a conscience.  This person was clearly dead inside.

There are families who got up this morning just like I did.  They woke up thinking about Christmas gifts they still need to purchase, wondering whether or not they remembered to pay the gardener this month or if they should go see a movie this weekend. They woke up just like we all did, expecting it to be a day easily passed through with all the usual mild peaks and valleys, and instead by mid-morning it turned into the worst day of their lives.  A tragedy so terrible it will be held up as an example to all the world for just how awful it can be.

On some level all of us will be waiting for some sort of explanation as to why this happened.  It's not going to come.  There is not going to be any explanation at all, much less one that is any way satisfying. There is and will be a continued discussion of how this happened, and even that will probably not be in any way satisfying.

There's already a flurry of discussion on social media and news sites about whether today is the day to talk about gun control.  The argument ranges from 'we should never talk about it' to 'we should, just not now' to 'if not now, when?'.

I tend to lean towards the side of let's talk about it in a day or two when it's still fresh, but today let's just think about those families.  My only thoughts right now on the subject are what they always are... I grew up in a house with guns because my Father had to carry them for work.  I also hate that they exist in the first place, as did he.  Gun control is different than taking away everyones right to bare arms. I have no desire to take away everyone's guns, but how we're doing things now?  Not working.

This will also inevitably end up causing a discussion on mental illness.  Everyone including myself will want to blame this persons parents, friends, colleagues because they're still here and he isn't.  They should've known, they should've stopped it, maybe they even caused it.  It's hard to give a shit seeing as how whatever illness he had made him a monster, but there will/should be a discussion on what to do if you're aware of someone who seems to be going off the deep end.  I would like to think, for now at least, that no one who knew him thought 'in a few days he's going to slaughter an elementary school'.

This may not be a popular opinion, but I think often times in situations like this it's akin (but obviously the pure evil version) of knowing someone who may or may not be suicidal... often times the people in their life feel powerless and don't fully grasp what the ultimate consequence may be or if they do that it would ever really happen.

Forgive my somewhat disjointed thoughts, again I lean towards worrying about these details tomorrow or the next day, but they're there and I'm sharing them.

My thoughts, and love, and anger, and shock is with the families of these people.

I also think we should all hug our loved ones today and tell them how much they mean to us, because none of us know what tomorrow brings.



21 comments:

  1. You write beautifully and movingly even, maybe especially, when it just comes straight out.

    And because I know you value honesty, I can honestly say I have never once felt sorry for the absence of privately owned guns in England nor wished we had them.

    I have been thinking of those poor families all afternoon. Just just unimaginable.

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    1. It is unimaginable.

      Yeah, if it were up to me I would ban guns except for people who need them for work... but the 'other side' is so hell bent on owning guns it'll never happen. I don't understand the concept of not at least meeting in the middle though, with some SERIOUS gun control. I mean, it's more difficult to get a drivers license and the purpose of cars isn't to kill.

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    2. Anything can be used as weapon including my knitting needles. I sure hope we don't ban those.

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    3. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-attacks-22-kids-knife-china-school-article-1.1220230

      The above link is to an article about a man in China wielding it on children. Guns aren't the problem, violence in general is the problem and it is world wide.

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    4. I think I agree with you in the sense that mental health is the bigger issue here (I grew up in a house with guns, I don't like them but I don't want to take them away from everone).

      But the key difference between that article with a stabbing and this incident with a gun is that in the stabbing, no deaths were reported. Guns tend to be a bit more efficient.

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  2. Violence is never an answer, it solves nothing. We need to learn to show more compassion, caring, communication, and peace. Peaceful resolution is the answer I can think of.

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  3. So, so very sad. I'm sad for the children who died, and for every single one of their families and everyone who knew them.

    We have pretty strict gun control here in Australia, and a lot of that legislation came into effect after a single gunman killed 35 people at a tourist attraction (Port Arthur Prison Camp.) And yet we still insist on murdering each other with guns. Guns are already here, already available if you know where to look and the people who want them so they can do evil are the people who are going to find a gun, no matter what. gun control might fix the odd impulsive drunken shooting of one person, but mass shootings like this are not like that. They have some level of planning, and unless every single gun in the whole world is destroyed, they're going to be able to get their hands on one. I just think that advocating for better mental health care and awareness is a much more realistic and achievable way of reducing things like this happening.

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    1. Totally agree you put it much more eloquently than I... I think gun control is certainly a conversation that needs to be had (if for no other reason than we can make it just a TINY, TINY bit more difficult to obtain I think it would be a huge difference) but mental health is really the key issue here and unfortunately I think that's even a harder issue to really tackle.

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  4. Who kills 20 babies? I ccan stop crying when I think about it.

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    1. I know. I cried too. There are days I'm afraid to leave my house. It's just nuts lately.

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    2. It does feel like the world has gone coo coo. Someone put up a quote on facebook today that I loved - that we're living in "the most illuminated of dark ages".

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  5. I can't even begin to imagine the grief that these parents must be going through right now. And at Christmas? I keep thinking of these poor parents going home to Christmas gifts that won't ever be unwrapped and it hurts my heart. Little brothers and sisters who don't understand where their sibling is. I know we always end up looking at these kinds of things through our own lens, and I can't help but think about whether any of these parents struggled with infertility. How much crueler to lose a child that you never thought you'd be able to have, but then miraculously did. (I'm definitely not saying the grief is worse than a fertile parent, just that it's a horrible circumstance). I'm not American, but I can't help but feel that if this situation isn't enough to open the conversation about gun laws, then nothing ever will be.

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    1. Omg Aramis - those were my exact, weird thoughts when it happened.... I started thinking about presents under the tree, and can't help but thinking about it from the perspective of an infertile. (I mean obviously it's HORRID either way, but that would be my lens to look at it through as you say). I worked my ass off to get pregnant, and it lasted about a week. I look at women who have lost further along pregnancies and absolute shock (and awe that they're able to even cope). Going through all that, and then having them for 5 years only to lose them? Unimaginable.

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  6. I really feel bad for the loss of human life. The ache I feel in my chest isn't soon to go away. So many, so young.

    No, I don't think the person was dead inside. He was obviously feeling some really negative thoughts towards his mother and the children she taught. He had to have felt something. I've seen people shut down and feel nothing. The ones that feel nothing curl up into the fetal position or just sit and stare out the window. Even if he had only a mild history of mental illness most mental health clinics won't let a patient go to a home where there are guns. The guns should have been removed to a safe place like the police station or to a friend that had a permit if that mentally ill man was to reside in that house with his mom.

    I have a permit to carry concealed. I keep all my firearms locked with the specified locks on them, in locked cases, stored in a locked special cabinet. The ammunition is stored far away in another room of the house from the fire arms again locked up. I don't have to take these precautions but I choose to do so. Though I've had my permit to carry for a few years I have yet to actually care a gun on my person. It is a choice.

    I really wish more folks that had fire arms would be smart about how they store them. Seriously the mom had a part in this for blame though I hate to think ill of the dead. She obviously didn't store the fire arms securely if her mentally ill son had access to them.

    Yes, he had to feel something to have done this. We won't know if this could have been avoided. We will never know for sure if he would have just gone out and stolen a weapon from a neighbor or friend if his mom didn't have them in the house either.

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    1. Do you really think he was feeling something? I just think that he has to have gone to such a dark place that everything eventually just shut down and was replaced by nothing but anger.. I can't even begin to imagine what was going on in his head, really.

      Yeah, I grew up in a house with guns and even though in a perfect world I think there would be no use for them it's an imperfect world. and I can't say that I'll never have one, I can't. I just wouldn't mind it one bit if they made me jump through many more hoops to get one.

      I just think of what a pain in the ass it is for me to get a drivers license, and the main purpose of operating a car is to get places. It wouldn't stop things like this from happening entirely I just think if we could come up with a plan that would utterly fail 95% of the time that would be a huge improvement.

      But yeah, mental health is really a discussion that needs to happen and I think that's unfortunately an even grayer area to tackle.

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  7. Love you. Well said. Such a sad day for these families.

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    1. And I you.. it's unbelievable. They're entire world has to have just ended.. That's what I keep thinking about. This will eventually be a footnote for us down the road, and for them this will be everyday, forever.

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  8. I've worked with the nurse at Sandy Hook- talking to her to help her with her software off an on for years. Software that she used to take care of 'her' kids. Some of those, that are no longer here. I think about having those kids medical records stop. As if in midair. I've got a distant link, but a link that brought me to my knees when the news broke.

    I hate this. I hate the evil, needless deaths, and all the despair.

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