News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
"How did this become the way a person expresses himself?" a colleague said as the news broke of the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College.
How could such acts of rage from angry, lonely, misfit young men become a commonplace act? Thurston High School, Columbine, Newtown, Aurora, Roseburg...
"Stuff happens, there's always a crisis," says Jeb Bush, candidate for President. "And the impulse is always to do something and it's not necessarily the right thing to do."
I don't seem to recall Jeb's younger brother on September 12, 2001, shrugging and saying, "stuff happens."
Americans are killing other Americans with guns at a rate of about 11,000 people a year. If Islamic terrorists were killing Americans with guns at that rate, you can damn well bet we'd be doing something about it. But apparently for some this is an acceptable level of mayhem in the U.S. c. 2015.
Speaking as one avid firearms enthusiast - this is not acceptable. It is a national tragedy - and it stains the honor of millions of responsible gun-owners. We can no longer behave as though this is not our problem.
We gun-owners seem to have forgotten that our right comes with a very serious responsibility - and that includes participating in the crafting of EFFECTIVE regulations that keep weapons out of the hands of people who are liable to use them to terrible purpose.
No, we will not eliminate gun violence - but it is specious and irresponsible to pretend that we cannot take active steps that will reduce it significantly, while retaining a legitimate and Constitutionally protected right.
Mandated licensing and training would be beneficial in many respects, not least in providing the opportunity to flag maladjusted nut-jobs who should not have firearms. If we wish our right to keep and bear arms to not be infringed, we must also accept the responsibility to be that well-regulated militia called for in the first clause of the Second Amendment to which we cleave.
Mass shootings garner the headlines and raise the level of anguish, but it is the day-to-day grind of individual incidents - domestic beefs that end up with someone dead, parties that end in gunfire, gang violence - that account for so much of the level of killing that is unparalleled in the developed world.
Singer-songwriter Jonathan Byrd, who has performed numerous times at the Sisters Folk Festival, has written thoughtfully on the subject. He grew up with guns - but not with a culture of commonplace school shootings and daily incidents of mayhem.
"When millions of people live close to the bone in a country that doesn't seem to care about them, and the most effective weapons in the world are widely available, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to paint the resulting picture," he notes.
It's not like this everywhere.
People own guns in "The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland," Byrd notes. "Canada is notably similar in that there are a lot of guns, but not much gun violence compared to the U.S. Almost every grown man in Switzerland has an assault rifle issued by the military. They have gun festivals with shooting competitions for the kids. All these countries also take care of their citizens. You can go to school, see a doctor, or take a year off work and have a baby without worrying about losing your home or other financial catastrophes."
A less anxiety-ridden, fear-driven and alienated society might produce fewer murderously maladjusted people and might do a better job of identifying and neutralizing them in advance.
It's not "just guns" or "just mental health" or just an increasingly alienated society where people crave notoriety at any cost. It's all of those things. And we need to work on this problem holistically.
We can balance rights with responsibilities, liberty with security - we've done it over and over again throughout American history. We don't need more partisan bickering or polarizing rhetoric - we need people of good will and serious purpose to sit down and start coming up with real solutions.
The American character is to fix things when they're broken, to take on hard challenges and find ways to overcome them. I hate to think that we've become a country that watches as Americans kill Americans, shrugs and says, "Stuff happens."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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