Thoughts

I’m as guilty as the next person, to be perfectly honest.  I’ve always been an advocate of gun control and I tend to assume immediately after  tragedy like the one in Connecticut today, that Gun Control is the conversation e need to be having. I still believe that is true. We need to talk about Gun Control in this country.  Much like we need to talk about Sex, Education, Healthcare, Homelessness, Crime, and about a thousand other things that we have boiled down to 30 second sound bites.

But Gun Control maybe isn’t the answer.  And it took a new friend of mine to point out what the answer really might be in a situation like this. Maybe we ought to think about what causes people to turn ot this behavior in the first place.

We think about these things, we talk about them and the first words out of our mouths are always “what a psycho!? What a Sick twisted person!!!”  And then we grieve as a nation and fight over the guns debate, or whether or not its violent TV shows and video games, or what have you.

Well we are talking about the problem, the very first time reaction we have, we just don’t realize it or stop to be compassionate about it.  We’re right. That a psycho, a sick sick person did this.  But not the kind of twisted evil disgusting sick psycho we talk about.  A human being, with a heart, and a broken organ in their body, a mental illness of some sort that we refuse to treat. 

I haven’t talked much about it, but I recently saw with my own eyes how quickly and traumatizing having a person close to you diagnosed with a mental illness come on.  My step brother, a person I never really cared for recently hit his breaking point.  I always thought he was just an ass, or obnoxious, then just an alcoholic or addict, then just plain annoying and rude again, but he was struggling, likely his entire life with mental illness.  A fairly serious case of Manic Depression; that, in retrospect, ought to have been visited earlier. 

There is nothing that can be done about our past.  My family cannot go back and “see’ what they didn’t see before; we simply have to move forward…

But are we as a nation moving forward yet? Why aren’t we having the conversation about funding mental health programs in this country again?   Crimes like this have been on the rise since we defunded the system completely in the 80s, and we won’t see it stop until we revisit that conversation.

Maybe we can stop talking about the Evil that is in the world, and stop reacting with disgust and fear, and realize that truly this person who commits this act is sick. Needs treatment sick, not needs hatred and punishment sick.  I don’t know all the answers, but I know they are going to take hard work.  Lots of it the hardest, I’m sure, is the first step.

Forgiving the shooter, and moving toward compassion for him as much as for the victims.