Dear President Obama,
It has been a bloody year.
A gunman enters a school in Newtown, Connecticut where children are supposed to learn, where they are supposed to be safe, and he guns them down. We do not yet know the extent of this tragedy, but we can begin to imagine and it is horrifying.
A gunman enters a mall near Portland, Oregon where people are shopping for the holidays, for themselves, it doesn’t matter. They are supposed to be safe. The gunman randomly shoots. Two are killed, one is injured.
A gunman enters a Sikh temple in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. People are there to worship and commune. They are supposed to be safe. Six are killed, three are injured.
A gunman enters a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. People are eating popcorn, watching a highly anticipated movie. They are supposed to be safe. The gunman guns them down. Twelve are killed, fifty are injured.
The facility with which we can recite the details of these tragedies speaks to how utterly, shamefully common they have become. We do not have the luxury of wondering if there will be another mass shooting in the United States. Instead, we wait for when there will be another mass shooting. We wait to learn the scope of this latest tragedy. We have to somehow reconcile that while gun ownership is an inalienable right in this country, safety from gun violence is not.
Today, and not tomorrow, we are waiting for you to step up because you are the president. We are tired of tomorrow as the better time to talk about gun control. We have run out of tomorrows, President Obama. We cannot afford to wait any longer.
We are struggling to make sense. We are crying out for change, for a mental health care system that can truly help the people who soothe their inner torment by reaching for weapons of such destruction. We are crying out for gun control laws that, at the very least, make it more difficult for such tragedies to occur. We are sick with grief and smallness and fragility.
How much blood needs to be spilled before you take a stand? How much blood needs to be spilled before you say, “Enough.” You are a father. You have always shown us that your fatherhood is part of what guides you. You are also a human being. You are our leader, the President of the United States. Today, not tomorrow, we need you to lead. Today, we need you to say, “Enough.”
22 responses
I live a half mile from Sandy Hook School. My 3 kids went there. I volunteered there. I heard the shots today. And the sirens. And the news choppers hovering all day. I dread the release of names because I still know teachers there, and parents whose children go there. I drive by it every day. And yes, we need to do something about guns, but even more so, we need to do something about getting folks that need it, the mental health help they need. That’s something that is seriously not talked about. There was a school stabbing in China too. The problem goes much deeper than guns. Unfortunately. My heart goes out to all those that lost loved ones, as well as the whole town, because we like to think we’re a cute little New England place of happy families and such. But this shooter took out both his parents and how many others? (I still have not heard conclusive reports). Not the work of someone happy with life.
I agree in that I’d like the President to push for gun control in this country, but I want us as citizens to do more. I want us to finally go on the offensive against groups like the NRA who refuse to even have a conversation on this problem, who feel as though the only answer to gun violence in this country is to make guns more available to more people. I want us to vocally pressure politicians and let them know that they’ll pay a price at the ballot box if they take money from the NRA or other gun rights organizations. I want a public push for an amendment to the 2nd Amendment, one that says yes, the Congress does have the power to limit the types and amounts of weapons and ammunition that individual citizens can own, and that the right to bear arms is not an individual right (which is how the right was understood for 200 years before this Supreme Court decided otherwise).
I’m not sad right now. I’m not heartbroken. I’m pissed off. There is no goddamn reason for this to happen. And I’m pointing the finger of blame for this shooting and for all the others mentioned in this article and those not mentioned at the people who fight against gun control, and especially at those who say that the answer to gun violence is more guns. You made this situation more likely, not less. Own it.
It’s all well and good to say you’ve had “enough” and demand that this type of violence just stop. the thing is that it is not going to stop until people are no longer in so much pain and misery, full of such hatred and confusion and twisted up inside that it drives them such terrible acts as these.
While I agree guns are too easily accessible, they are not the main problem here – human beings will always find horrifying ways to hurt others.
Mandy,
Here’s why easy access to guns is as important as access to mental health care is: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/american-exceptionalism-the-shootings-will-go-on/266293/
Guns are a violence multiplier in a way that no other easily accessible weapon in the US is. They allow a person to cause far more damage and more quickly. This doesn’t have to be an either/or–let’s make it a both/and.
amen!
This president is the same one who sheds no tears for the children in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen who were mutilated and killed in drone strikes on his orders? And who keeps ordering the strikes?
Just checking.
now i know why obama said today is not the day to discuss gun control laws.
and another atlantic article on the subject: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-case-for-more-guns-and-more-gun-control/309161/3/
This poem provided me with much needed context today, and I offer it here in hopes that it may do the same for you.
Courage
We know what trembles on the scales,
and what we must steel ourselves to face.
The bravest hour strikes on our clocks:
may courage not abandon us!
Let bullets kill us – we are not afraid,
nor are we bitter, though our housetops fall.
We will preserve you, Russian speech,
from servitude in foreign chains,
keep you alive, great Russian word,
fit for the songs of our children’s children,
pure on thier tongues, and free.
– 23 February 1942 Anna Akhmatova
It breaks my heart to see the animosity here already. The guns used to kill these children and adults were legally owned by the teacher whose son committed this atrocity. He killed her and then went to the school. NONE of us will ever really know the reasons why this happened. It is too complex. We need to have real discussions about what can be done in the long run. As long as opposing sides do not respect each other, no solution will ever be found. It is a sad state of affairs.
It is easy to make assumptions about what should have happened, what must be the cause, because one of our greatest past-times is drowning our woes over ice in shoulda coulda woulda. That isn’t the fault of liberal policy any more than it is the fault of the NRA or the education system or the office of the president or Spuds Mackenzie, although Max Headroom did cause some irreparable damage to a great many minds. (Hint: it’s the fake stutter speak.)
As it turns out, each of our opinions is necessary, and there
are forums set in place to register all of our concerns.
Thanks to the editors and to the astronomical Ms. Roxane Gay,
this is one of them.
I pasted the next part on, previously sketched, because it
represents some small part of the content and tone I would like
to hear as part of this very important conversation we are all
very possibly doomed to stick in the mud.
They say a body politic resembles its pets.
I say, this isn’t “them” we’re talking about, it’s us.
“They” did not do it. We have done this.
We are responsible. It is up to us to act.
Or sit back in our cigars and smoking robes
and do nothing about the wanton, reckless
hatred slaughtering our innocent.
While, mired by opinion (opinion weighted with gold)
we render ourselves and by extension (and perhaps collusion)
our government leaden, unable to move.
But action only benefits the discontented.
What will have to dawn, so that we see that our chatter
is meaningless without action to demonstrate it? That our
accusations only clutter the floor? That our hollow promises
will never fly?
Who do we make them to, and why, but ourselves, for comfort?
Tell me that it takes one angry man gunning down children
to move a body of souls toward action and I will rally to you.
We will both watch as the other grows old, falls
infirm, dies, and achieves no result.
When do we finally get to start thinking as a we?
O, then drink to your trends, wretched cur!
Drink for woe, and a red dawn, raise your chin and howl.
And order me a round. We can’t none of us achieve
anything lasting alone.
I have seen so many opinion pieces in every possible form cover this topic…and although I am by no means a ‘gun nut’ (I have a healthy fear of them, but would also like to learn how to use one properly)…everyone is missing the forest for the trees, from the way I look at it. Why are we not instead making this into a real, extensive, discussion of the way mental health, the treatments in place to help those in need, and the frequent consequences due to a poorly managed culture surrounding it, instead of fixating on the easy target, the guns? That would be putting a band-aid on the real issue. And, like we have seen over and over with the more or less ineffective War on Drugs…band-aids do very little in the long run (I.e., the repeated imprisonment of addicts instead of a real attempt to put them through a program to treat their addiction).
Just my two cents. Having experienced the – what to me felt like a completely traumatizing experience in and of itself – whirlwind of our country’s mental health facilities and the ideology that keeps them that way, i thank god that the insane amount of anger and violence i felt as a teenager were all turned inward – because really, if it hadn’t been, i shudder to think of what unfixable harm i might have caused to others.
i don’t know – i am certainly not trying to disrespect anyone’s opinion, or cheapen the grief that those involved must feel. I just believe that it all goes so much deeper than guns.
Otterpop, I so appreciate seeing your words here – because it makes me feel less alone with my own thoughts.
And would people please quit blaming any one person (in this latest case Obama) because he is only one person and it is childish and foolish of us to expect any one person to solve our problems, be it him or any other person in office or not. We need to solve our problems.
Ah, I see comments have been moderated, with particular ones gone, which make some of the remaining ones not quite make sense. I”ve always appreciated how The Rumpus does not let comments here become the sad things that are all too often what we see elsewhere. Some may call that censorship, I call it civilization. Thanks, Stephen, for making this a safe space.
146,000 have signed this White House petition since Friday. Sign now. forward it to everyone you know:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/immediately-address-issue-gun-control-through-introduction-legislation-congress/2tgcXzQC
I’m amazed at how well gun control has worked out in Mexico…does anyone actually think criminals give a shit whether automatic weapons are legal? Does anyone want to have no option or way to protect themselves when a criminal with a gun storms into your house?? People are fucked up, and there will always be violence like this. All of these killers showed signs- parents, step up and do something about these kids while you can and before they are loose on the world.
I’m deleting this comment and the ones which reply to it, not because I’m scared of Wooly Bully’s “truth,” but because he’s being abusive, and we don’t allow that in our comment threads. Wooly Bully is welcome to continue commenting, but abusive comments are not tolerated. And we’d appreciate it if other members of the community wouldn’t respond to abusive comments.
Here’s a news story about the Oregon mall shooting a couple of days before the Newtown school shooting. At the very least this armed law-abiding citizen distracted the shooter, possibly saving lives. Had the shooter continued shooting this armed citizen would have put a stop to it.
http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html
By way of reply to the claims made that armed citizens make for a safer society through intervening in mass shootings, I offer this piece from Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/12/can_armed_citizens_stop_mass_shootings_examples_of_armed_interventions.html
The short version is that most of the time, when a citizen intervenes in a shooting, it’s either an off-duty or retired police officer, which means it’s a person who either has or has had extensive training not only in using a weapon, but in using it under chaotic conditions. In other words, they’re not your random citizen.
What’s more, I think this piece by Firmin Debrabander in the New York Times’s makes an even better point: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/the-freedom-of-an-armed-society/
Guns do the opposite of protect liberty and free speech. They harm it. They often cow the unarmed into silence. A democratic society is one which is free to offend, one which is free to speak unpopular ideas. If the only people who feel free to speak their minds are the ones with guns, then we don’t have a free society anymore. We have a tyranny of the armed.
Try your ideas about guns harming liberty and free speech out on the oppressed people in nations where the citizens have few if any guns. You will not find many who agree with you. Maybe you haven’t noticed but not many people are trying to get into nations without guns but our nation is under seige from immigrants, both illegal and legal.
Would someone please let the moderator of this website know that a democratic society is one which is free to offend and speak unpopular ideas.
I strongly recommend those who do not want to live in an armed nation buy a ticket ASAP to a nation without guns and apply for citizenship or a work visa or whatever it’s called so you can live there. See how that works out.
Websites are not democracies and unmoderated comment streams are cesspools. You have the right in this country to shout pretty much whatever you want, but you don’t have the right to do it wherever you want. The Rumpus reserves the right to set standards for behavior in its comment threads and to moderate comments as it sees fit. If you don’t like those rules, you are welcome to comment about our site elsewhere, to whomever will read your words. This, by the way, is pretty standard for any website. Standards for behavior vary from site to site, but almost everyone has them.
In the early 80’s a serial rapist was making his way through town carrying a ladder that he propped up against two stories houses entering through the second floor. I think the count was 16 when they finally caught him. The whole town was spooked. Before the capture I was visiting the local hospital and got on an elevator with four nurses and two residents. “Anybody carrying?†I asked. I was the only one who wasn’t and they pulled from hip pockets and purses an assortment of interesting handguns made by companies that make money on both sides of every conflict. At the time I didn’t care if they had concealed weapon permits. Nobody did really. Nature’s most prolific defense mechanism is stealth and camouflage. After that? It’s stingers, fangs and pinchers, so gun control? Controlling YOUR gun is essential!
So after Stony Hook I’m sitting in the dentist’s chair listening to the dental hygienist lament the painful event and wondering why culture has to be so violent. I had just passed the receptionists desk who had pictures of her son everywhere….a Marine who had just returned from the $60 billion war that morphed to the $1.5 trillion war on fictitious evidence found by a President whose great grandfather was head of small arms procurements for the U.S. Army during World War I and whose father love Contra death squads. The dentist in the next room was talking to defense contractor who was moving to another city with a company that makes drones that he said “leave on their own, carry out their mission and return on their own.†The dentist said “sounds like my wife going out shopping. She does that and it’s always a mission.â€
I looked at the dental hygienist and thought of her question. Then I thought of Adam Lanza problems with the mysterious form of Autism called Aspergers Syndrome, how it had been the subject of recent congressional hearings. Just then, on the intercome tuned to a radio station that played country and western music was an advertisement inviting the public to the big gun show as the Convention Center not far from the mall where days earlier an elderly man who walked their for his exercise had had his throat slit in the men’s room.
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