'It's Complicated'

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For the past week, I have been reading news stories, editorials, political cartoons and letters to the editor about the shootings in Newtown, Conn. It's not necessarily that I wanted to read them -- some of the details have been hard to swallow -- it's just the nature of my job.

I've seen viewpoints from both sides -- "more gun control is needed," "guns don't kill people, people kill people" -- but today, I ran across this note from the publisher of the Twin Falls, Idaho Times-News (seen above) that made a very good point:

"There is certainly deeply troubling progression that occurs each time a mass shooting occurs. Both local residents and then national leaders immediately proclaim the shootings to be 'horrific,' declare them 'tragedies' and issue statements implying some sort of national grief that Americans feel -- or at least ought to feel. ... And then a short 72 hours after each mass shooting, the fiscal realities of 'real' solutions are cited, monied interests re-stake old ground and elected officials on both sides of all mass-shooting issues shrug their shoulders and cry out in unison, 'It's complicated.' Yes it is. But with the president and his election committee having spent nearly $1 billion -- and U.S. senators and representatives spending countless additional hundreds of millions -- they may well have thought that they'd be called upon to address, and solve, complicated issues."

It is indeed a tragedy every time a lunatic -- because that's what you have to be to do something like this -- goes on a rampage and kills a slew of innocent people, whether at a school, a mall or a movie theater. But as with most things in today's world of instant gratification, they are easily replaced in the news cycle by the next big story. When the funerals are over, how quickly will everyone start to forget about what happened last week? How long after our elected leaders are done giving their "sympathies" to the families will it take for the next shooting to occur? A year? A month? A week?

Perhaps we should be asking, how long will it take for the victims families to forget what happened? The answer of course is, they never will. As the mass shootings and dead bodies continue to pile up,  the status quo is obviously not the answer. And our elected leaders saying, "It's complicated," should no longer suffice as an answer to "why did this happen?"

I have a dream that my son can go to school one day and not worry that a maniac will barge into his classroom and inexplicable kill him and all his classmates. I have a dream that he will never feel the fear that the children at Sandy Hook felt while they hid in closets and raced down hallways to safety. And I have a dream that someday my idyllic world for my son will someday be more than just idyllic.

So who's to blame for the nearly ceaseless string of shootings in our country? The media for turning every shooter into a household name? The police for not seeing the violence coming? The parents for not raising their children to be good-standing citizens? Congress for not regulating the gun industry more closely?

Maybe it's all of us for not holding our representatives' feet to the proverbial fire when questions need to be answered and problems need to be solved. And for stupidly reelecting them time and again despite their ineptitude to do something, anything, when something obviously needs to be done.

I can't pretend to be a policy wonk, adept at writing legislation that will protect all of my loved ones from the next mass shooter. I know doing nothing isn't the answer, but I also know banning guns (or conversely asking teachers to carry guns) isn't the answer either. There must be a happy medium in there somewhere, and it's up to our leaders to find it.

They can tell us, "It's complicated," but what worth fighting for isn't?