Last night President Obama gave a great speech called the Tucson Memorial Speech. In his speech he called for all U.S. citizens to honor the Congresswoman, two federal employees, three civilians, and a little girl recently shot by a random shooter by "trying to be a better people... better friends, and parents and neighbors.... (to try to embody) the same gentle and happy spirit which (the little girl) Christina Taylor-Green possessed."
This was the President's way of trying to move up and out of another trough of fear that gripped our nation last week as the result of another multiple execution of innocent people by one random mentally-ill person. As much as I really admired the President's attempt to unite the country with good-will, I think he should also seize this time to DO something about it.
Immediately ensuing the atrocity, of course, people always want to know how this can happen. The obvious questions are: "Was this person sane?" "How did he obtain a gun?" And, "Why didn't anyone help this person before he literally went ballistic?"
Since this shooter focused on a political rally, questions also centered around the current heated political rhetoric as being too provocative for unbalanced minds - but there are two obvious common threads sitting right at the surface in every excuse for a rampage. One shooter's excuse was: "I was angry at the political system." One's was: "I felt disenfranchised at school." Another's was: "My company wasn't helping me find a job".... The two inescapable constants in EVERY example were that deeply disturbed people, displaying 'abnormal behavior' and hostility got their hands on guns.
President Obama thinks that if we were better friends, parents and neighbors we would be able to support these people, but their own families have a very hard time steering children or siblings with psychosis toward help. Can being kinder or more attentive handle the severely complicated needs of a person that would kill? It is insulting to the good people who lived "kindly" around the horribly unstable individuals before they ultimately killed them to keep asking for more kindness! I agree that it is a curse for individuals and their families to have to struggle with the ravages of severe mental illness, but I also believe that it would help those families more to be given rapid identification of their illness so that they can get long-term treatment and proper follow-up. Sometimes this requires more "tough love" than gentleness.
I would argue that not only did our nation loose beautiful Christina Taylor-Green on January 8, but it lost an entire generation of "Gentle, Happy Spirits" since the Columbine Massacre, because of fear. Kids who were born in 1987 have heard about "disenfranchised" kids, and mentally unstable people, committing multiple murders at schools EVERY year from their first year in Junior High - all the way through until their last year of College. (Sometimes two or three times in one year!). Many kids go to school every day now fearing that the oddly-behaving, aggressive child next to him in school could come in the next day with a gun aimed at him, and the school is nervous too. One person with a gun can take out 30 innocent people in a few minutes (Virginia Tech). In our kid's lifetimes they have seen it happen too many times - and with apparently nothing anyone cares enough to do to fix it. (33 school shootings in the U.S. alone since 1999)* This removes our youth's sense of security and happiness from their childhood days. It is imperative that our legislators finally enact serious gun laws as a result of this last mass shooting. We need laws which would require, from state to state, consistent screening of the people who ask for the right to buy a gun. The Senate and the House should pass the amendment banning the sale of assault weapons, and we need stricter penalties placed on people who do not keep their guns out of the hands of others.
If we had better mental health guidelines and treatment options for people, and, stricter gun laws, we WOULD all feel gentler and happier. These are two concrete things we can do right now to heal this generation and make our country better and to truly honor those that lost their lives in Tucson last Saturday.
*infoplease.com
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