I was going to write about the unbridled joy of being a kid at Christmas, the simple pleasure of waking up on Christmas morning, running out in your pajamas — after being too excited to sleep the night before — to see that new pile of presents under the tree. Yes! Santa has been!
“Yes! Santa has been!” (The writer, 1970)
The events of Friday morning at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut changed everything. The level of violence is difficult to comprehend, the fear those children would have experienced unthinkable, the stories of sacrifice by the staff unimaginable, the grief of the families immeasurable. It simply needs to stop. The system requires a reboot, this “right to bear arms” rethought. Who needs to have a military assault rifle in their home? Anyone?
Obviously, it will not be easy. As President Barack Obama said in an emotionally charged speech in Newtown, “No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society. But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this.”
“Better than this” will involve standing up to the lobbyists, the usual suspects who roll out the usual hoary old justifications, pathetic excuses and “helpful” suggestions including “what we need is more guns, not less guns.” I can’t even get my head around that statement. Then there’s the tip-toeing through the minefield of political machinations. Then there’s the NRA. Someone has to take that first step.
No doubt there are countless toy guns sitting under Christmas trees around the planet right now — the paper to be torn off them by excited little hands, so they can play cops and robbers or soldiers. One can only hope that in years to come, it will be much more difficult for these children to get their hands on the real thing and wreak the havoc we saw on Friday.
The time has come for the rhetoric to be followed through. We owe it to Friday’s children — Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeleine, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Avielle, Benjamin and Allison. As well as the adult victims, these names should have appeared on Christmas gift tags — not as statistics of another horrific mass shooting. They have now become ghosts of Christmases future.
©Steve Williams 2012
I’m struck (from a distance in Australia) by how a law that was meant to protect vulnerable exposed them. The fathers who wrote the 10 amendments to the constitution understood the 10th commandment ‘…shall not covet neighbours stuff’. They knew people would break in and steal their neighbours stuff and worse. Therefore they made another law ‘right to have and bear arms’. That law created a new problem in the hands of broken people. Obama is right when he says ‘no single law can eliminate evil’. He is right by saying ‘we need to change’, but change from within is also impossible. ‘Christmas—incarnation’ is profound because laws cannot eliminate evil, and because we cannot change. We need a saviour. At the first Christmas, there was a massacre of infants. Christmas was set against that evil then and is set against that evil today. Grace can do what law can’t.
I also think some of the responsibility lies with how our culture glamorizes violence, we’re saturated with it in the media, it’s in the violent video games our kids play, in the music we listen to, the movies and celebrities we idolize. Change? Yes. But from more than just the politics. Thanks for sharing Steve. Read my take on the Connecticut shooting: http://www.thebarefootbeat.com/2012/12/17/tragedy-and-hope/
“… these names should have appeared on Christmas gift tags…” That’s such a poignant line. So devastating, how suddenly life changed to loss for those involved.
True – a tragic, senseless act of violence. Gun industry lobbyists are sadly way too powerful & many politicians way too corrupt.
Well said mate.