There were other things that I expected to write about this morning, but they can wait. Tragedies happen with unfortunate regularity, but I can’t recall one that involved the murder of so many young children. Regardless, the deaths of 20 babies is beyond comprehension. The death of six adults is a nightmare. And whatever caused the shooter to do such a thing, both his sadness or sickness and his suicide are part of the tragedy.
It is all so mind-numbingly horrible. Some focus on the “why” question. I don’t. It no longer matters, It happened, and that can’t be changed by understanding it better. Nor will it change the next time it happens, any more than Columbine changed this time. It merely gives us something to do while the dead bodies of beautiful children lie in the Sandy Hook Elementary School so we don’t feel utterly useless and puny as we think about this from far away, unable to contribute anything that matters.
Yet, even as the bodies of the children that mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, loved and adored, held and kissed, played with and dreamed with, lie still, there are some who are so cold as to immediately calculate how they can use this to their own advantage.
Mike Huckabee blames “removing God from schools,” as the reason for the shooting. Randazza disproves the usually sound view that ad hominems are never warranted.
UCLA Lawprof Eugene Volokh had two posts up on the merits of wider gun ownership before the sun went down. And conservatives rip the president for hinting that guns must be controlled, while liberal rip the president for refusing to utter those two words.
I borrow again from Tim Kevan, that priests believe, people feel, lawyers think. Today is a day to feel, not think or believe. Feel for the parents, the loved ones, who lost their babies. Don’t think. Don’t believe. Just feel.
There is no answer to a horror like this. For all the “answers” offered, all those inclined to see a tragedy and use it for their own purposes, the reality is that humanity has endured horrible tragedies before and will do so again, and no one, no group, no solution, has ever altered this course. We have events of wonder and greatness, and events of horror and tragedy. That’s the nature of humanity.
So too is it in the nature of humanity to seize the opportunity to use tragedy to further one’s own agenda. This is not part of our better nature, and it demeans us and the tragedy.
I cannot feel what the parents of the children murdered in Newtown feel. But I can feel the terrible sadness of such a tragedy. For today, that’s all that can be done.
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Amen, Brother Scott.
“I can’t recall one that involved the murder of so many young children.”
Bath, Michigan, 1927. See Wikipedia.
This is why you don’t belong here. I actually assumed someone would be so fundamentally stupid as to leave a comment like this, and began the next sentence with “regardless.” And yet, you couldn’t control yourself and felt compelled to be the person who had to leave that comment on this post.
On days such as this we should only tend to the wounded, bury the dead and pray for everyone involved. We can cast aspersions and scream at one another tomorrow about whose solution is best.
Yes.
.
This tragedy has brought up feelings of sadness and despair in me of which I have not been tortured by in many years. I cried yesterday when I first heard the initial story – an elementary school shooting with several dead. I cried even more, and harder, when it was revealed the child victims numbered 20 and were between ages 5 through 10 years old . . .
As my fiancée sobbed next to me, she asked that I pick up our most amazing two-year-old boy – our everything – early from preschool so that she could hold him. Right then, and for several moments, I felt nothing but emptiness – an emptiness that the parents and those who knew those innocent children will most certainly feel forever. . .
I shed tears again after I read of the bravery and sacrifice of the principal and the school psychologist, who, both defenseless, confronted the shooter and were immediately killed . . .
And then today, I read that each child had been shot multiple times – some of them with up to 11 bullet wounds – and felt as though we, as a species, are doomed . . .
I hope we aren’t and I hope that I don’t feel this way forever, but more than anything, I hope that those who knew and loved the victims will somehow, in the future, find a level of peace and happiness in their lives. I’m not sure I ever could . . .
I’m not sure I ever could either.
Well said. There are many people on social media decrying the gun control laws or lack thereof. There’s a certain ugliness when people jump to the political angle on the heels of a tragedy. There will be plenty of time to debate whether guns kill people or people kill people. For now, all we can do is feel, and, at this moment, I cannot help but feel as a parent. My thoughts and prayers are with them and the Newtown community.
Hearing about this shooting reminded me of how I felt when I heard about the Dunblaine shooting in Scotland in 1996. It was tragic and inexplicable, as was the shooting today, and nothing that has happened in the intervening 16 years has provided me with any insight into how to understand or explain such shootings. And, frankly, it shouldn’t, because the loss is real, the pain is real, the anger and the sadness are real.
I absolutely agree with you SHG. While everybody wants such tragedies to stop and serious discussion needs to take place to try and figure out how to prevent such tragedies, now is a time to feel.
On Nov 1, 1991 there was a mass murder in my department resulting in six deaths that day and ultimately seven deaths about 15 years later when a part time undergraduate employee who was turned into a quadriplegic died.
I recall thinking at the time I hope nobody else has to deal with what I am dealing with and after I had attended five funerals and memorial services in one week thinking this is what is happening in Ireland but there it does not stop. It did finally stop in Ireland but not in other countries or here.
We were able to get the legislature to tighten up the rules for issuing permits to purchase handguns but the NRA has been able to get that legislation thrown out with the trash. We even organized a symposium on gun violence with speakers from CDC. The NRA reaction was we have to figure out how to make those folks from the CDC shut up.
It seems like a drunkards walk where the drunk takes 20 steps foreword and 25 step backwards.