When I lived in New York, in Manhattan, the morning news would often bring word of an overnight homicide. I would pause to hear where the body had been found, where the shots had been fired, and, once assured the location was, as it often was, down on the lower east side, or up in Harlem, or on the platform of a subway line I never took, I’d resume getting ready for work.
I was not alone in this habit. It was a way to cope with living in a city that could be dangerous. We’d reassure ourselves: oh, okay, not here, not in this neighbourhood, not where I live, or where I work. It’s over there, or up there. It’s sad, but I’m safe.
Early on, didn’t we cope with mass shootings in much the same way? With horror, but ‘not here’ relief? Angry, outraged, empathetic, but, well, it happened over there. Not here.
What folly.
One morning, Anderson Cooper appeared on television in front of the restaurant where I’d had dinner not twelve hours before. Some kid had shot his way through windows and bodies at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, a place I knew well.
In the wake of tragedy, people often say they never thought it could happen to them. That morning, I realized it’s not that people think they are blessed, or special, or set apart. It’s that no one expects Anderson Cooper to broadcast from their street. No one expects to be caught up in a media maelstrom. No one expects to drive down their Main Street between a funeral for still another child and a wall of police cars and media vans. No one expects the President of the United States to be sitting in a classroom of their high school working on words for their torn and bleeding community.
But more and more and more of us find ourselves in a similar position. Two more communities in just the last twenty-four hours: El Paso and Dayton. It’s here. It’s us. It’s now. It’s Anderson Cooper or one of his colleagues about to stand in our neighborhood.
After Newtown, the feeling was that the conversation would, finally, change. It did not. Agonized parents discovered that no one paid attention if it was ‘only’ about gun control, or ‘only’ about the lives of tiny children, so they added mental health to the equation. To little effect.
What folly.
I grieve. With each new shooting, I relive that December morning. I am not alone. Survivors and residents of Newtown and Las Vegas and Parkland and Columbine and Orlando and more, and now El Paso and Dayton, and the list will grow, do the same.
This is our national consciousness. This is what we share.
Your words beautifully express the pain in my heart. Part of the pain I feel is due to the fear that your words, so strong and clear, along with those of so many others, will continue to be shoved aside and rendered meaningless because of the lawmakers who can no longer feel it; who don’t want to face it or combat the few who believe that the right to own assault weapons that can wipe out multiple people in a minute is more important than human life in our country. How many lives will it take?
I just don’t know. It’s inconceivable that it’s been allowed to go on. There is no decency.
These words are a gift . You are blessed with the ability to define the sorrows of our lives and that of a nation . Until we can agree that gun violence is not acceptable ,the deaths are repeated and repeated . Having lived through the Sandy Hook shootings and Las Vegas , my heart cries for something , any thing for this to stop. There is a weird ” can do ” spirit that surfaces after these tragedies . Healing gardens , Foundations , media attention in every available form , stadium size ceremonies . I have great empathy for those who have their world blown apart by guns , and if such actions help them then I shall go alongside this outreach . How ever , when everything fades , then what ? Thank you , Eve , for writing this.
We’ve become a country of great and unacknowledged sorrow.
Unacknowledged by the people with the power to do something about it. After each new horror, we say maybe now, maybe now. But, already the conversation has veered into discussions about video games, and post-9/11 solutions. It’s guns. It’s guns. It’s guns.