Everyone Has Something to Say About Sandy Hook

Pardon me if I meekly clear my throat and offer this:

To begin with, I find it disturbing that users of social media are co-opting the events that occurred in the town of Sandy Hook. The onslaught of memes and graphics from people who have little claim to those events except for, assumably, a strong sense of communal grief and empathy has been overwhelming, but not in a good way. If you have a meaningful comment to post, please do. However, if you're sitting in front of your computer, arranging the photos of the slain children into a collage you're hoping to collect "likes" for, then stop. The only people who should be using those images are the families of those children. They do not belong to you. Although this has become a matter of public mourning, there has to be some respect for the private pain that these families are dealing with, and whatever we're feeling, it simply can't compare. So say your peace, and then leave it alone. We have no right to craft a thoughtful response to this event. There should be no manipulation of images, no waxing eloquent, no sentimentality that isn't earned.

Furthermore, do we really believe that this is either a gun control or a mental health issue? Have we become such a nation of binaries that we can't imagine how it might be some of both and maybe even something else besides? See, I think it's at least a gun control issue, a mental health issue, and a community issue. In terms of gun control, do we really think that we either can have guns or we can't have guns? As a bleeding-heart liberal gun-owner, I like to think that there are some smart and reasonable people out there who might be able to craft legislation that's fair to responsible gun owners. And I believe the slippery-slope argument is listed as a logical fallacy in my college textbook. Look it up.

And of course this is a mental health issue, too, as were most of the prior mass shootings. What can we do about this? Remove the stigma of diagnosing mental health issues. Fully acknowledge that mental illness is a real, often chemical, thing. Find ways to fund and support the individuals and families that contend with mental illness everyday. I'm sure other things, too. I'm confident that there are knowledgeable people out there with great ideas for enacting meaningful change, but we have to be willing to move forward into uncomfortable territory.

In terms of this idea of community, it seems like the more private and isolated we become as individuals and as families within our communities, the more likely something like this can foment. And yet the more we become exposed to events like this one, the more inclined we are to withdraw into our homes out of distrust for our neighbors. Catch-22. When I learned about this event, my first thought for Dexter was home-schooling. So, great. The more we distrust each other, the more we isolate, the more we isolate, the more out-of-touch we become with our fellow human-beings. One can imagine how it might become easy to miss the signs of great mental disturbance in such a scenario. Family life used to be more public. We used to know the family that lived next door and across the street. The more we know about the individuals that live around us, the more we can empathize and offer support to them before that support has to be packaged as grief.

All I can say is that it's absurd to suggest that these sort of tragedies are easily attributed to one thing.

And we should stop watching the news. It's just a heavy-hearted doomsayer. Instead we should fill our precious time with joyous art and long walks through our neighborhoods. I'm oversimplifying, I know, but such logical fallacies belong to idealists like me who still refuse to believe that, as a rule, other human beings shouldn't be trusted.