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Did I
hear the man from that gun organization correctly? The only thing that
beats a bad man with a gun is a good man with (I presume a bigger) gun?
Well, I guess, if you're making trillions by selling weapons and representing
the armament cartels around the world, that would be a good solution for you.
Everyone knows that the only reason to fight gun violence with more guns
is to make money for gun manufacturers. If you want to hunt, you don't
need assault weapons. But, If your government scares you so much that you
need automatic weapons to defend yourself from it, maybe you need another
country to live in.
In March
of 1990, Jim was watching the news one evening, when I walked through the
room and caught a report about the little Brooklyn boy, David Opont, who was set on
fire by kids in his neighborhood for refusing to try crack. I flipped
out. We lived and worked in Bridgeport, CT at the time with many urban
kids and we needed to do something to make life better for them.
Certainly, I felt, this great country can offer its children safety and
protection. So, Jim and I sought funding and over four
years produced "Child’s Play: A Violence Prevention Media
Resource" for schools and the community, including an hour TV documentary, “We The Children: Violence
in the Lives of Inner City Children.”
In
December of 2012, still living in CT, we experience the tragedy of Sandy
Hook. I’m sad, shocked and
outraged, but not surprised. For "Child's Play" we interviewed
two of America’s leading authorities on violence, it's impact on children and
violence prevention as a public health issue: Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith and
Dr. James Garbarino. They both said the same thing; people
across America aren’t feeling this problem because it’s happening mostly in
urban communities, but the problem of angry young men, violence and too many
guns will hit the suburbs.
In a
recent MS Magazine blog post on the Sandy Hook massacre, Soraya Chemaly, points
out that the problem of angry young men wielding guns and murdering people is
quite common in our country. "Domestic" violence doesn't get
the attention a mass killing does, but it is a problem of epidemic public
health proportions. After all, she points out, the first to die that day in
Sandy Hook was the 20 year old assailant's mother. (Ms. Blog,"Why won't we talk about violence and masculinity in America?")
This gun ad is reprinted from the MS article, it's for one of the guns that
made the Sandy Hook massacre possible. "Consider your man card
reissued?" Really? How does this play in the psyche of a disturbed,
conflicted, enraged 20 year old male raised on the glamor of guns and the
adrenalin of violence?
Perhaps
we have reached the tipping point, there is a lot we can do to make sure Sandy
Hook is never repeated again. As then Chief of Bridgeport, CT Police, Tom
Sweeney, states in "We The Children; " America's going to have to
choose between keeping children safe and its love of guns. Stop wringing your
hands, there are no new arguments, they've been the same for the past 25 years,
(and he's talking almost 20 years ago); make
a decision."
Motivated
by love and the desire to protect our children, we can make effective changes
that don't force them to carry the burden of our problems. I shudder when I
think of all the sweet boys diagnosed with Aspergers, Autism or even ADHD who
might become the scapegoats and focus of this crisis because the powerful gun
lobby can spin the PR and buy a public approach that takes the "heat"
off them; even if it is, as usual, blame the victim.
The
idea that we should fight gun proliferation in our communities
with more legally sanctioned gun proliferation is ludicrous. What does it do to
your educational experience to have armed guards roaming the corridors? Ask inner-city children or just consider how you feel about flying these days. Gun
control legislation, especially laws controlling public access to military
style assault weapons, ammo and mandating careful background checks for
licensing is desperately needed; yet, there is no one factor and no one
solution to our epidemic of violence.
Together, using many approaches and our combined effort we can create the culture we want for our children. In my dream of how we respond to this crisis, we each pick something we are passionate about, something that will do the community good, and do it. Here's how the most eloquent among those we interviewed put it:
Together, using many approaches and our combined effort we can create the culture we want for our children. In my dream of how we respond to this crisis, we each pick something we are passionate about, something that will do the community good, and do it. Here's how the most eloquent among those we interviewed put it:
We can
demand accountability of our legislators and tell them to grow a pair and
champion our children's interest over the gun lobby or we'll choose someone who will.
As our experts pointed out, the entertainment industry, with its
penchant for gratuitous violence aimed at boys and young men, can be held
accountable by the American public. Let's use our imagination to figure
out how we can enjoy beauty and goodness as much as we do blood and gore.
Let's figure out how to make sex sweet, safe, and
real and how to reclaim it from the predatory sex industry. Let's animate and film entertainment for our children that's fun,
but doesn't involve all the violence for laughs, shock and awe.
We can organize community resources
so we have things to do together - places to dance, sing, drum together, whether we're single, a couple or a family. I know a lot of people will point to their church
and say, we've got all that right here in our faith community. With all due respect, if Westboro Baptist Church or Mike Huckabee
is what comes with church suppers and socializing around bible studies, I think
we need alternatives. Let's create community centers that aren't focused on creed, but on bringing diverse groups together for the good of all.
One big move at home would be to turn off TVs, computers and
other wired devices long enough to be present with the people we love. Be
inventive, find other things to do together - games, word puzzles, story telling
contests, nature adventures and walks.
I'd
like to suggest that, especially in the evenings, instead of watching TV, a
family can play with dreams the way we do in Active Dreaming: creating theater
from dreams, writing stories and reading them to each other from dream themes
or making up a story from just the title and first line of a dream, each person
taking turns adding a line. Pull out the art supplies and draw or paint from
dreams, share the pics and talk about them, hang them on the refrigerator. With
stories and pictures, we can practice resolving dream conflicts or fears in
creative ways. Always, we respect the dreamer as the only owner and
authority of his or her dream, no matter her or his age.
It is
possible to dismantle this culture of violence, if we want to. We can dream a
culture we want to bequeath our children for many generations to come and we
can set about creating it right now.