I remember Sandy Hook. I remember watching the news and feeling my insides drop. I remember going into my mom's bedroom and seeing her eyes wet with tears. I remember going to my synagogue where I worked as a teaching assistant, looking at all my kids, and thinking "it could have been us." I remember the nation coming to a standstill, moments of silence in schools, theaters, and stadiums. I remember standing ovations when the surviving children sang at the Super Bowl. I remember feeling it, all of it.
Last week there was a shooting at a community college in Oregon, mere miles from where I live and study. People my age, stressed about exams and torn up over their love lives. Anxious about their careers and passionate about their futures.
If the mass murder of elementary schoolers hit me like a punch in the gut three years ago, you'd think the mass murder of my peers would have knocked the wind out of me. But it didn't.
I saw a headline about it on my Facebook newsfeed while eating breakfast, and then I scrolled down and clicked on a Buzzfeed video of celebrities watching animals give birth.
What happened? What's happened in the span of the past three years that we've gone from nationwide heartbreak to blatant indifference? You'd think that with every mass murder the horror would grow. The public outrage would intensify. The desperation for answers would spill over the breaking point. But none of that has happened. We were sad about Sandy Hook for a while. And when the next shooting happened, we were sad about that one too. And the next one after that left many of us with heavy hearts, but we didn't dwell. And who could blame us? We have too much going on in our own lives to freak out and get emotional every time something bad happens. Especially when it happens every couple of months.
Watching Obama make his opening remarks about the shooting (offering condolences, saying how these people had their whole lives ahead of them, offering his prayers, etc), I found myself feeling bored and frustrated, and just a little bit hopeless. And you know what? He seemed to be feeling the same way.
Watching him up there, he reminded me of the parent of a drug addict, finding his kid in jail or the hospital once again. Wondering, when will it end? They say that they are done for good, and they seem sincere, but they seemed pretty damn sincere last time too. And the time before that. What will it take? How bad does it need to get? Will this cycle ever change?
Every time this happens, I feel a little bit less frustrated, and a little bit more bored and a lot more hopeless.
People talk about how guns aren't the problem. They talk about mental illness and bullying and drugs and sexism and one thousand other factors that I'm sure all contribute in one form or another. But you know what? I don't care.
We can and should work to solving the issues that lead people to violent acts. But does that mean we should just ignore the enabler? If you're in a room slowly filling with poisonous gas, and there is an unlocked door right next to you, what do you do first? Do you run out of the room and try and solve the problem once you're safe? Or do you stay in the room as long as possible, slowly suffocating but sure you'll find the off-switch somewhere?
For every one American killed by terrorism, more than a thousand are killed by gun violence. We go into a panic over an average of 31 deaths by terorrism a year (2004-2013), but have become numb to an average of nearly 32,000 deaths by gun a year in the same time period. There are more Americans killed by guns in a single year than Americans killed by terrorism in the past decade.
We are living in a constant state of panic over people halfway across the world who manage to kill a few dozen Americans a year. We throw in countless resources and give up virtually all of our amendment rights. Because protecting American lives is a top priority. But when our own citizens are killing each other at one thousand times that rate? We do nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I'm tired of feeling numb. I'm done with hearing debates on the news and arguments between politicians. It seems that all we do anymore is talk and debate and argue, but that isn't enough. Talk doesn't stop mass murder, actions do. People are dying and we as a country have stopped caring. When are we going to wake up and do something?
