3 Calls for Common Sense in the Wake of Newtown
What happened in Newtown has shaken me to my core. As the news unfolded, I sat there, gripped in anguish at the thought of 26 lives so viciously and quickly ripped away, and I cried. I cried for the victims, I cried for their families, I cried for my children, I cried for our country.
I cried, and I started thinking. I thought about how we got here -- to a point where mass shootings are happening on an increasingly frequent basis. About how anybody could have the desire and the means to murder 20 first-graders and 6 adults in a matter of seconds. About what this world is coming to.
I, like many of us I'm sure, have spent the days since the shooting mentally consumed by it. What can we do to stop this from happening again? How do we protect our kids? What can we do besides watch, cry, and pray?
It is a complex set of social circumstances that has landed us where we are today. There is no one cause and no one solution, and no guarantees that any one approach will prevent future attacks. But that doesn't mean we are helpless. We have to take a good look at some of the collective decisions we've made as a society, and challenge them. We have to recognize that we as a country have allowed some things to happen over the past 20, 30, 40 years that combined to enable the reality of December 14, 2012.
It's terrifying, it's embarrassing, and it's overwhelming. But in the wake of Newtown, we have reached a point where we cannot just individually mourn, but need to come together to rally for change. To stop fiercely fighting for what we as individuals might feel entitled to, and start fiercely working to make our country a safer place for all our sakes.
We CAN do something about it. And we need to.
I am asking all of us -- every member of American society -- to put aside platforms and politics and think about logical steps we can take to try to prevent what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary... in Oregon... in Aurora... in Tucson... at Virginia Tech... at Columbine... from happening again.
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CALL FOR COMMON SENSE #1 - Keep assault weaponry out of the hands of civilians. I'm not arguing with the right of a responsible, licensed adult to own a handgun or rifle to hunt for food or protect themselves or their property defensively. That, after all, is what we can reasonably assume our forefathers were intending when they penned the 2nd Amendment. But there is no reasonable need for any regular American citizen to own a weapon designed solely to kill multiple humans as quickly as possible. None.
Do these guns cause these shootings? No. But can they serve as a tool for unnecessarily efficient killing when they are when in the hands of a deranged person? Yes. Maybe the Newtown shooting would have still happened regardless of the type of gun the shooter was holding. But just think - how many lives could have been saved if he was carrying a different weapon instead? 10? 15? Possibly all of them - he may not have even gotten in the door.
Reinstate the ban on assault weapons and ammo. Now.
CALL FOR COMMON SENSE #2 - Media: recognize the power you have to help prevent future tragedies like this from occurring, take that power seriously, and act accordingly. Time and time again, we've heard psychiatrists and psychologists theorize that the individuals who commit these barbaric crimes are seeking infamy through their actions. And time and time again, these murderers are awarded just that in the wake of these tragedies, with their names and photos plastered all over the television, the internet, and in print, their deadly legacy cemented infinitely. And somewhere, someplace, some brain could be watching and observing that this is a guaranteed path to recognition.
So choose to stop. Your ratings, your desire to exercise your right to freedom of the press, your feelings of obligation to inform the public -- none of these should be more important than choosing to exercise the power you have to possibly prevent this from happening again. Sadly, it is too late to make this choice with regards to Newtown. But if there is a next time, make that choice. Cover the event, but don't report the killer's name or photo. Talk about mental and criminal history if it's relevant, but do not give them a face or a name to be forever associated with their actions. Deny them this, and you may deflate the motivation of another would-be killer.
Media consumers: yes, you have a right to know what's going on in the world. And our basic instincts drive us to want to know who did it, to put a face and a name to the monstrosity so we can direct our anger. But this is an instance where that right should be trumped by a collective realization that making that information public has the potential to do much more harm than good. By omitting just those two critical details -- and that's what they are really, just details -- we may help save lives and prevent additional families from enduring the nightmare we've been witnessing. Isn't that worth it?
Tell your news sources this. Tell them you don't want them reporting the name and photo of these killers in the future. Make a choice not to continue to look to those news outlets that do choose to grant the killer attention.
CALL FOR COMMON SENSE #3 - We need to stop enabling and encouraging killing "practice" via insanely realistic, violent video games. The correlation between violence in media and violence in society has long been debated. But in the past 20 years, technology has introduced an increasingly disturbing phenomenon -- the ability for anybody with a few hundred dollars to purchase a simulated reality in their own homes where they can, acting in first person, kill humans for "entertainment," for hours and hours, day after day. This is not passively watching one person shoot another on television. This is not the 8-bit world of 25 years ago, where the lines between game and reality were very disti...
