As a parent, grandparent, and retired public school educator my heart hurts for the shooting tragedy that occurred after the Huguenot High School graduation. In a blink, lives are changed forever.
Honestly, I’m not surprised that we are processing another mass shooting.
Consider, these findings about gun violence, firearm ownership, single parent families, and the shrinking of religion.
The Johns Hopkins Center For Gun Violence Solutions has released its annual report.
The Center reported this grim data: In 2021, for the second straight year, gun deaths reached the highest number ever recorded. Nearly 49,000 people died from gun violence in the U.S. Each day, an average of 134 people died from gun violence—one death every 11 minutes.
A June 2021 survey of 10,606 American adults conducted by Pew Research Center found four-in-ten adults live in a household with a gun, including 30% who personally own one.
In August 2022, the Annie E. Casey Foundation reported nearly 24 million children live in single-parent families in the United States, or about one in every three kids across America.
Perhaps, you recently saw this headline: The Importance of Religion In The Lives of Americans Is Shrinking.
The Public Religion Research Institute collected data from 6,600 adults in all fifty states. The leading takeaway: “Just 16% of Americans surveyed said religion is the most important thing in their lives, that’s down from 20% a decade ago.”
Record setting deaths by gun violence, significant firearm ownership, millions of single parent families, and a country that every year slips further away from In God We Trust—forms quite a collision.
Yet, it seems perfectly clear to me that we are indifferent to the catastrophic collision revealed in this data. Additionally, we are numb to the repetitive reality found in headlines regarding another mass shooting.
If we think, we are insulated, immune, safe in our silos from being impacted by gun violence, firearm infatuation, fragile families, and crumbling churches, we are wrong.
Currently, we have a single frame of reference for solving a problem—take out a gun and shoot the problem.
In the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, actor Morgan Freeman, portrays Ellis Boyd Redding, a prisoner who has served forty years of a life sentence for committing murder.
In an appearance before the parole board, Mr. Redding is asked if he is sorry for what he did. Mr. Redding affirms that everyday he regrets his decision.
But, Mr. Redding also makes a revealing reflection about his act of violence. He states: “I look back on the way I was then— a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try to talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone, and this old man is all that’s left.”
No parent would turn down the opportunity to try and talk “some sense” into the raging mind of a loved one before the trigger is pulled. Regrettably, we keep missing the opportunity to talk.
As a retired educator, I know the planning that goes into a high school graduation ceremony. Years ago, safety was on the radar, but not like it is now.
After the Huguenot shooting, safety plans for graduation ceremonies are changed forever. School systems and municipalities must maintain interior security strategies that are working. But now, they will be required to design and implement a safety perimeter for the exterior of the building too.
Of course, no mass shooting is immune from comments by politicians.
Finger pointing and heated words are worthless. Instead of negligent posturing, why not commit to the hard work of building the relationships needed to solve our gun violence?
With regard to a solution, I believe these words from Anne Sullivan capture our situation: “We are afraid of ideas, of experimenting, of change. We shrink from thinking a problem through to a logical conclusion.”
This is an urgent matter.
We can no longer afford to be afraid of change. Nor can we continue to shrink from our responsibility to find logical and reasonable solutions.
Do we really want future reports from Johns Hopkins to document even more deaths per minute?
Do we want to continue to miss opportunities to “talk some sense into ourselves?”
We are overdue to set aside our differences and to commit to the hard work required to solve the mentality of pulling the trigger of a firearm as the way to fix a problem.
At this very moment, a troubled, frustrated, ready to snap human being is forming the next devastating headline.
Haven’t we had enough?
might be baloney 