Just Talk

Random Violence

We are America.  We are awash in violence.  If one more media commentator uses the phrase “unspeakable” to describe these actions, I may fracture the screen.  It’s not “unspeakable”.  We speak of this violence all of the time.  In fact, that’s pretty much all we manage to do; talk.

This weekend a shooter interrupted a final exam study session at Ivy League Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.  Eleven students were injured, two have died from their wounds.  Police held a “person of interest” for several hours, but he was released.  The shooter remains at large.

This weekend, activist and legendary director and actor Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, were found stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home.  Reiner, originally of “Archie Bunker” fame; directed “A Few Good Men”, “the Princess Bride” and “This is Spinal Tap”.  He was a driving force in progressive politics; and a leading voice opposing the Trump Administration.  The attacker remains at large and unidentified.

Surprise

And, as if to prove that random violence is contagious, this weekend there was an attack on a Jews celebrating Hannukah, the festival of light, on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.  At least two shooters took the high ground, randomly shooting into the joyous crowd.  Fifteen were killed, twenty-seven more wounded.  

One attacker is dead, the other in custody. Both are of Middle Eastern background, as is the courageous man who wrestled the rifle away from one of them. That hero was shot twice by the second shooter, and is in the hospital.

At least that’s a “surprise” in Australia.  After a horrible mass shooting in 1996, when 35 people were killed, the Nation instituted strict gun control laws.  While this hasn’t prevented all shootings, it did make these incidents rare.  Which makes this attack perhaps even worse.

But violence is no surprise here in the United States.  It’s common place.  And the phrases “unspeakable” and “hearts and prayers”, are only weak salve on the wound.  No one is seriously suggesting a real response, a real solution to our ongoing failure to protect. 

Solutions 

We can lock up our children in their schools.  We can add more police.  We can, as some suggest, arm EVERYONE so that the “good guys can shoot the bad guys”.  We can put more police around Jewish gatherings, protecting them from growing anti-Semitism.  But America’s reality is that we are a nation of violence.  It must be in our national DNA.  At least Australians can take some solace in the fact they’ve taken action, and plan to take even more.  Here in the United States, all we do is talk.

Someone will say:  well, the Reiner’s were stabbed to death.  Gun controls wouldn’t have helped them.  In fact, if they had guns, maybe they’d be alive.  And that’s true; American violence is endemic.  But tell the Brown University students that cowered behind desks that guns aren’t a “root” of our violence.  Tell the two National Guardsmen shot in Washington, DC just a few weeks ago.  Tell all of the children who will hide in the back of a classroom in a “school shooting” drill this week.

Here in America we should learn from Australia.  Today they are talking about what they can do to prevent this kind of tragedy.  Today, America is talking about “thoughts and prayers”, of “unspeakable acts”.  We are in an age of political paralysis, led by a President and a Party only interested in securing their own financial benefits.  

Thoughts and prayers are the best we can do: it’s just talk, and  just cowardly.

Essays on Mass Shootings

Author: Marty Dahlman

I'm Marty Dahlman. After forty years of teaching and coaching track and cross country, I've finally retired!!! I've also spent a lot of time in politics, working campaigns from local school elections to Presidential campaigns.