Kim, I feel you. "Thoughts & prayers" is a cop-out. It makes me enraged too.
I also like what you shared about growing up in a small Midwest town & the hunting culture there. I also grew up this way. Like you, I don't romanticize rural life or the old days, but I see that how seriously it was treated then, is nothing like it is now.
Talking about it openly & publicly is the way forward. It is very hard to have the conversation w/ the "2A" shout-downs, but I think we just have to keep going.
This is one of the most enlightening summations of the gun issue I have seen anywhere--thank you Angie. This issue weighs heavily on my heart as well. It feels like each massacre (and they are weekly, if not daily) makes me give up another bit of hope. The result is that those of us thinking clearly on this issue get so worn down, we are terrified and paralyzed--and the gun mongers get to move ahead with their evil agenda. Besides trying to vote out the ultra right (which is increasingly tough to do given the gerrymandering and relentless voter suppression moves by the GOP) do you have any insight into how we citizens can best keep our hopes up and dig in to make a difference on this issue when it all seems so hopeless? I'm someone who wants to fight this--I fear generations behind me, like Millenials and Gen Z may just be OVER it all and assume their vote and actions do not make a difference. All they have ever experienced is this mess--school shootings, drills etc.
While my sample size is admittedly tiny, the Gen-Zers I know are fired up and ready to redirect public policy. They feel screwed by the status quo. I'm looking for ways to support them.
Deborah, you're welcome. Thanks for reading & commenting. I've been following a lot of experts on this for a few months & they definitely informed my point of view on it, but it really crystalized for me after watching Derry Girls.
It is really, really difficult to maintain hope when there are, on average, daily massacres. It feels a little insane to have hope in a situation like that. One thing I've learned from Black social justice leaders over the last 4-5 years is that hope is a discipline. I think we want to easily & naturally experience a "feeling" of hopefulness, but marginalized communities who've had to stay active against all odds for years, centuries even, teach that hope is more like a practice that we have to train ourselves into. Reframing that way has made a big difference for me.
In terms of digging in, I'd strongly suggest joining Moms Demand Action, March For Our Lives, and/or Everytown For Gun Safety. Take any opportunity you can to speak up about it & attend protests when you can. Not wearing seat belts & drinking & driving also used to be normal, were also resisted legislatively, & now are completely normal. Those of us who don't want to live this way are in the majority & eventually, we will turn the tide.
Finally, to your fears about Millennials & Gen Z, I'd have to agree w/ JenFW below. Gen Z especially is completely over it, they have paid a heavy personal price w/ the school shootings & as they come into greater power, they're going to do something about it. Look what just happened in the midterms??!!
Jen, that feeling of powerlessness is something this extremist faction is trying to cultivate among us. Exhaustion is a really common way for oppressive systems to successfully operate. Do your best to resist it. I'd also recommend thinking about hope differently, as I described to Deborah above. Thanks for sharing here!
I've been thinking about hopefulness and hopelessness in the very context you mention in another comment (how oppressed people ever have any), but I haven't found the resources you have, fashioning it as a discipline. I relish the idea of having some control over it since the easy, natural, privileged kind is scarce just now.
Although, that exhaustion is real and heavy and deep. My discipline has been lacking where it once was strong. If I can't lend a hand, I'm more than willing to get out of the way, as suggested by Bob Dylan. C'mon, GenZ!
In truth, there is still one thing I manage to do: write letters, both the snail and e kind. I feel like the snail ones carry more weight since there are fewer of those these days. Of course, whether anyone even reads said letters, let alone cares what they say, is anyone's guess. I write them anyway. They make me feel better.
The title of this note is profound. I had never thought about mass shootings as anything but random. I was in middle school when Columbine happened and remember my parents assuring me that it was totally random and things like that would never happen at my school. And while they still haven't at the school I attended, I remember telling my husband after Uvalde that a local shooting was just a matter of time. And how is that even ok?? "Oh, yeah. You know those T-Ball kids I coached? It's just a matter of time before they're gunned down."
We homeschool ,for many different reasons, but ultra-religious reasons are not on the list. The community to which we belong is mostly ultra religious and conservative. A few weeks ago, us mothers were talking about how harrowing it must be to have to do active shooter drills and how traumatizing that has to be for kids. Several mothers admitted this was a factor in the decision to homeschool. But I know from bumper stickers and comments that these women are not voting in a way that supports the safety and security of children. And I don't get it. How is it that they buy into the fear mongering from 2nd Amendment sycophants, but are perfectly fine with the burden of victims of gun violence burying their own children?
I also feel hopeless a lot, but after any given shooting, I give my representatives call. Both my state and federal congresmen have taken money from the NRA. I know my phone call won't cause a crisis of conscious, but I do lay the guilt on thick and hope that when they are on their death beads, the souls of the children they helped murder pay them a visit.
Kelsey, thanks for sharing all this. It's very, very challenging to live in a community w/ values that are worlds apart from your own. It's that questioning & internal confusion you mention . . . the, "I don't understand why they are saying this thing & do this other thing." It is extremely disheartening, but fear is a powerful way to manipulate people.
That said, I think in a setting like that, you are almost serving a moral mission. I don't mean in a religious sense, but more in a deeply human sense. You are forging relationships w/ folks who hold those beliefs & maybe someday you will have the opportunity to ask one of those mothers about words vs. actions & it will start an awakening of her humanity that overpowers her fear.
As to those in government leadership that help commit these murders for money . . . I used to say to a young person I know who was deeply harmed by an adult who will never be brought to justice, "Karma does not forget."
I agree, this is a useful and thoughtful analysis of what is the problem. I have my own reactions and patterned responses, but three that I would like to offer here are politics being used to separate us, boys having nothing meaningful to do, and mental health being misunderstood.
I am a retired mental health professional, and I am cautious about allowing "mental health issues" to be used as a tool to capture and control people. This is not to say the young men who do the shooting are not emotionally disturbed; they are, of course. Killing other humans is perhaps more of a spiritual disorder than a mental health one. And, the large majority of the shooters have been prescribed and have taken psychiatric drugs: our panacea for everything: just drug them into submission, and this so obviously doesn't work, perhaps makes it work.
Historically, young men often went to war as soldiers; what a hideous path laid out before them! I am of the generation where my friends were drafted and forced to war in Viet Nam. The hormones and mental chaos of the adolescent (male and female, now non-binary perhaps) have not been addressed by our culture. Young men have powerful urges, ancient and primordial, and they are offered sports and hyper violent video games as their only tools. Because healthy and wholesome activities are no longer offered, or are mocked and ridiculed, and adult men do not understand their ultimate requirement to mentor, guide and initiate the young ones, these young men are left alone, isolated, unaware that they could be part of something valuable. Their shoot ups are grossly distorted suicides, feeling their lives, and by extension, others', are meaningless.
And my pet concern is how politics is used to force us to identify which team we support, and therefore which values we will feel to own. Even in these very thoughtful comments, we see the Republicans identified as wrong. But supporting the Constitution surely cannot be seen as bad, right? All our elected officials are required to pledge on oath to uphold it. And it was written to protect the early citizens and revolutionaries from the uncaring demands and control of the British king. It was written to allow the people to have a voice in managing and controlling the government, not the other way around. We are at a time when many want more government controls, for righteous and appropriate issues like assault gun access, but it is that proverbial slippery slope when we want the government to have the power to control more and more of private bodies and lives.
Connie, thanks for your thoughtful response. I agree w/ some of your points, esp. about a "spiritual disorder" and a need for belonging in a community that offers mentorship and healthy, safe guidance that makes a young man feel valued, loved, and able to contribute.
I also understand your concern about the political divide, but we also have to acknowledge how "supporting the Constitution" might be used as a deflection while they "line their pockets." The Constitution should be more of a living document that at times might require thoughtful adjustment to our realities. For instance, how could the Framers know about AK-47s? Also, an important thing to remember, the Framers themselves were not perfect, infallible beings. Perhaps what they wrote should be viewed through that lens and we could then be freed up to make common sense adjustments.
I had to read this several times. There aren't enough hearts in the world for this post. Thank you for doing the hard work and letting us know how we can take action!
Thanks for the well-thought and researched post about the un-randomness of gun violence and mass shootings in America. I've been sitting with your words while unpacking a conversation I stumbled into while I was on a vacation earlier in the year. A woman and her child shared the same breakfast table with me, and based on the clothing and other clues not so subtle, she shared that she is supporter of the NRA, a gun owner, and that her business includes a gun shop that sells the most popular guns used in the majority of mass shootings.
Given that I am a counselor (I don't believe I offered that information about myself, my bad?) I asked her why she thought these mass shootings and singlular acts of violence were happening, she did not tie any of it to access to guns, bump stock rifles, Social Media, the way influencers in our political system talk about gun rights, or even, "crazy people." She immediately said that if people would model better parenting to their children, we wouldn't see so many acts of violence, guns or no guns.
I was stunned. So I asked the only other question that popped in my mind to her reply. "If you were to ask the children of Uvalde that survived, what do you think they would think about your answer?" She said she didn't know, only it is the right of all U.S. citizens to own guns and that she would stand by that Constitutional right.
That sounded like a deflection. To her, the mental health of tomorrow's future murderers were solely in the hands of their parents ability to instill a proper moral compass, instead of the shared response-ability within the larger societal context in which we are raised. When those societal leaders, aka mother figureheads and father figureheads spout racist, hateful rhetoric along with the reminder that it's their right to arm themselves to the teeth, would not the child-mind either 1) mimic that rhetoric, or 2) wake up and resist it, as is part of the normal developmental cycle of emerging young adults?
And that is why I have tremendous hope for GenZ'ers and beyond. They have seen that the current rhetoric is killing their "kin" -- people just like themselves, and people not like themselves, thus expanding their understanding of human rights beyond the simple reductionist view that protected free speech - and have enough bravery to break from the lock-step of the ideology that has not been working for them since the day they were born.
As for me: after the woman and her children left my breakfast table at the restaurant, I sat there while my coffee grew cold and just sighed for a long time. I don't have answers. Just so many, many questions, usually starting with, "Why?"
Oooof. Imei, this was a really tough conversation. I am really struggling to engage w/ people this "far in" at this point. I cannot understand how the lives of children remain less important to them than being able to sell, own, or "open carry" assault rifles. As I said to Connie above, I think especially when there is a profit motive, the deflection based on constitutional rights is very likely. Everything you brought up here about the impact of the rhetoric & access to guns to the hope of Gen Z rings true to me.
If we look at that part -- profit motive -- and run it against nearly every question we have about current events, it feels so very heavy. Almost everyone who is found to have lied about something had a lot of money on the table to lose if the truth came out.
I have been sitting on this for a few days now, and I still have not been able to formulate an insightful comment. As a teacher, I had to talk to my students in the aftermath of Sandy Hook and Parkland, as well as whenever we had drills (thankfully my state does not have active fire drills, only those run by school personnel). But even those situations were so traumatizing for my students. My heart has been broken so many times and 'thoughts and prayers' do nothing to mend them. I firmly believe that significant social change is needed to prevent these - and other - not-random events such as overdoses and other deaths of despair. Thank you for your thoughts, Angie. Also getting my gears turning.
Melanie, I really appreciate that you brought up the other not random events & deaths of despair. For me, these are linked to a collective illness we are experiencing and we can't address this with individual parenting methods (as Imei said above) or personal choices, this is going to take societal-level change. I'm so sorry you had to carry the weight of talking to students about these shootings. We are a nation of broken-heartedness.
Kim, I feel you. "Thoughts & prayers" is a cop-out. It makes me enraged too.
I also like what you shared about growing up in a small Midwest town & the hunting culture there. I also grew up this way. Like you, I don't romanticize rural life or the old days, but I see that how seriously it was treated then, is nothing like it is now.
Talking about it openly & publicly is the way forward. It is very hard to have the conversation w/ the "2A" shout-downs, but I think we just have to keep going.
This is one of the most enlightening summations of the gun issue I have seen anywhere--thank you Angie. This issue weighs heavily on my heart as well. It feels like each massacre (and they are weekly, if not daily) makes me give up another bit of hope. The result is that those of us thinking clearly on this issue get so worn down, we are terrified and paralyzed--and the gun mongers get to move ahead with their evil agenda. Besides trying to vote out the ultra right (which is increasingly tough to do given the gerrymandering and relentless voter suppression moves by the GOP) do you have any insight into how we citizens can best keep our hopes up and dig in to make a difference on this issue when it all seems so hopeless? I'm someone who wants to fight this--I fear generations behind me, like Millenials and Gen Z may just be OVER it all and assume their vote and actions do not make a difference. All they have ever experienced is this mess--school shootings, drills etc.
While my sample size is admittedly tiny, the Gen-Zers I know are fired up and ready to redirect public policy. They feel screwed by the status quo. I'm looking for ways to support them.
Agree Jen!
Deborah, you're welcome. Thanks for reading & commenting. I've been following a lot of experts on this for a few months & they definitely informed my point of view on it, but it really crystalized for me after watching Derry Girls.
It is really, really difficult to maintain hope when there are, on average, daily massacres. It feels a little insane to have hope in a situation like that. One thing I've learned from Black social justice leaders over the last 4-5 years is that hope is a discipline. I think we want to easily & naturally experience a "feeling" of hopefulness, but marginalized communities who've had to stay active against all odds for years, centuries even, teach that hope is more like a practice that we have to train ourselves into. Reframing that way has made a big difference for me.
In terms of digging in, I'd strongly suggest joining Moms Demand Action, March For Our Lives, and/or Everytown For Gun Safety. Take any opportunity you can to speak up about it & attend protests when you can. Not wearing seat belts & drinking & driving also used to be normal, were also resisted legislatively, & now are completely normal. Those of us who don't want to live this way are in the majority & eventually, we will turn the tide.
Finally, to your fears about Millennials & Gen Z, I'd have to agree w/ JenFW below. Gen Z especially is completely over it, they have paid a heavy personal price w/ the school shootings & as they come into greater power, they're going to do something about it. Look what just happened in the midterms??!!
Thank you for those action steps!!!
I care, but I feel powerless. When people in power are not held to the rules the rest of us must follow, then I'm at a loss for what I can do.
Jen, that feeling of powerlessness is something this extremist faction is trying to cultivate among us. Exhaustion is a really common way for oppressive systems to successfully operate. Do your best to resist it. I'd also recommend thinking about hope differently, as I described to Deborah above. Thanks for sharing here!
I've been thinking about hopefulness and hopelessness in the very context you mention in another comment (how oppressed people ever have any), but I haven't found the resources you have, fashioning it as a discipline. I relish the idea of having some control over it since the easy, natural, privileged kind is scarce just now.
Although, that exhaustion is real and heavy and deep. My discipline has been lacking where it once was strong. If I can't lend a hand, I'm more than willing to get out of the way, as suggested by Bob Dylan. C'mon, GenZ!
In truth, there is still one thing I manage to do: write letters, both the snail and e kind. I feel like the snail ones carry more weight since there are fewer of those these days. Of course, whether anyone even reads said letters, let alone cares what they say, is anyone's guess. I write them anyway. They make me feel better.
Jen, letter writing is quite a hopeful act. Thanks for doing it!
I find letter writing helpful too. It feels like action. As does calling our congresspeople.
The title of this note is profound. I had never thought about mass shootings as anything but random. I was in middle school when Columbine happened and remember my parents assuring me that it was totally random and things like that would never happen at my school. And while they still haven't at the school I attended, I remember telling my husband after Uvalde that a local shooting was just a matter of time. And how is that even ok?? "Oh, yeah. You know those T-Ball kids I coached? It's just a matter of time before they're gunned down."
We homeschool ,for many different reasons, but ultra-religious reasons are not on the list. The community to which we belong is mostly ultra religious and conservative. A few weeks ago, us mothers were talking about how harrowing it must be to have to do active shooter drills and how traumatizing that has to be for kids. Several mothers admitted this was a factor in the decision to homeschool. But I know from bumper stickers and comments that these women are not voting in a way that supports the safety and security of children. And I don't get it. How is it that they buy into the fear mongering from 2nd Amendment sycophants, but are perfectly fine with the burden of victims of gun violence burying their own children?
I also feel hopeless a lot, but after any given shooting, I give my representatives call. Both my state and federal congresmen have taken money from the NRA. I know my phone call won't cause a crisis of conscious, but I do lay the guilt on thick and hope that when they are on their death beads, the souls of the children they helped murder pay them a visit.
Kelsey, thanks for sharing all this. It's very, very challenging to live in a community w/ values that are worlds apart from your own. It's that questioning & internal confusion you mention . . . the, "I don't understand why they are saying this thing & do this other thing." It is extremely disheartening, but fear is a powerful way to manipulate people.
That said, I think in a setting like that, you are almost serving a moral mission. I don't mean in a religious sense, but more in a deeply human sense. You are forging relationships w/ folks who hold those beliefs & maybe someday you will have the opportunity to ask one of those mothers about words vs. actions & it will start an awakening of her humanity that overpowers her fear.
As to those in government leadership that help commit these murders for money . . . I used to say to a young person I know who was deeply harmed by an adult who will never be brought to justice, "Karma does not forget."
I agree, this is a useful and thoughtful analysis of what is the problem. I have my own reactions and patterned responses, but three that I would like to offer here are politics being used to separate us, boys having nothing meaningful to do, and mental health being misunderstood.
I am a retired mental health professional, and I am cautious about allowing "mental health issues" to be used as a tool to capture and control people. This is not to say the young men who do the shooting are not emotionally disturbed; they are, of course. Killing other humans is perhaps more of a spiritual disorder than a mental health one. And, the large majority of the shooters have been prescribed and have taken psychiatric drugs: our panacea for everything: just drug them into submission, and this so obviously doesn't work, perhaps makes it work.
Historically, young men often went to war as soldiers; what a hideous path laid out before them! I am of the generation where my friends were drafted and forced to war in Viet Nam. The hormones and mental chaos of the adolescent (male and female, now non-binary perhaps) have not been addressed by our culture. Young men have powerful urges, ancient and primordial, and they are offered sports and hyper violent video games as their only tools. Because healthy and wholesome activities are no longer offered, or are mocked and ridiculed, and adult men do not understand their ultimate requirement to mentor, guide and initiate the young ones, these young men are left alone, isolated, unaware that they could be part of something valuable. Their shoot ups are grossly distorted suicides, feeling their lives, and by extension, others', are meaningless.
And my pet concern is how politics is used to force us to identify which team we support, and therefore which values we will feel to own. Even in these very thoughtful comments, we see the Republicans identified as wrong. But supporting the Constitution surely cannot be seen as bad, right? All our elected officials are required to pledge on oath to uphold it. And it was written to protect the early citizens and revolutionaries from the uncaring demands and control of the British king. It was written to allow the people to have a voice in managing and controlling the government, not the other way around. We are at a time when many want more government controls, for righteous and appropriate issues like assault gun access, but it is that proverbial slippery slope when we want the government to have the power to control more and more of private bodies and lives.
Connie, thanks for your thoughtful response. I agree w/ some of your points, esp. about a "spiritual disorder" and a need for belonging in a community that offers mentorship and healthy, safe guidance that makes a young man feel valued, loved, and able to contribute.
I also understand your concern about the political divide, but we also have to acknowledge how "supporting the Constitution" might be used as a deflection while they "line their pockets." The Constitution should be more of a living document that at times might require thoughtful adjustment to our realities. For instance, how could the Framers know about AK-47s? Also, an important thing to remember, the Framers themselves were not perfect, infallible beings. Perhaps what they wrote should be viewed through that lens and we could then be freed up to make common sense adjustments.
I had to read this several times. There aren't enough hearts in the world for this post. Thank you for doing the hard work and letting us know how we can take action!
Thank you so much for reading friend!
Thanks for the well-thought and researched post about the un-randomness of gun violence and mass shootings in America. I've been sitting with your words while unpacking a conversation I stumbled into while I was on a vacation earlier in the year. A woman and her child shared the same breakfast table with me, and based on the clothing and other clues not so subtle, she shared that she is supporter of the NRA, a gun owner, and that her business includes a gun shop that sells the most popular guns used in the majority of mass shootings.
Given that I am a counselor (I don't believe I offered that information about myself, my bad?) I asked her why she thought these mass shootings and singlular acts of violence were happening, she did not tie any of it to access to guns, bump stock rifles, Social Media, the way influencers in our political system talk about gun rights, or even, "crazy people." She immediately said that if people would model better parenting to their children, we wouldn't see so many acts of violence, guns or no guns.
I was stunned. So I asked the only other question that popped in my mind to her reply. "If you were to ask the children of Uvalde that survived, what do you think they would think about your answer?" She said she didn't know, only it is the right of all U.S. citizens to own guns and that she would stand by that Constitutional right.
That sounded like a deflection. To her, the mental health of tomorrow's future murderers were solely in the hands of their parents ability to instill a proper moral compass, instead of the shared response-ability within the larger societal context in which we are raised. When those societal leaders, aka mother figureheads and father figureheads spout racist, hateful rhetoric along with the reminder that it's their right to arm themselves to the teeth, would not the child-mind either 1) mimic that rhetoric, or 2) wake up and resist it, as is part of the normal developmental cycle of emerging young adults?
And that is why I have tremendous hope for GenZ'ers and beyond. They have seen that the current rhetoric is killing their "kin" -- people just like themselves, and people not like themselves, thus expanding their understanding of human rights beyond the simple reductionist view that protected free speech - and have enough bravery to break from the lock-step of the ideology that has not been working for them since the day they were born.
As for me: after the woman and her children left my breakfast table at the restaurant, I sat there while my coffee grew cold and just sighed for a long time. I don't have answers. Just so many, many questions, usually starting with, "Why?"
Oooof. Imei, this was a really tough conversation. I am really struggling to engage w/ people this "far in" at this point. I cannot understand how the lives of children remain less important to them than being able to sell, own, or "open carry" assault rifles. As I said to Connie above, I think especially when there is a profit motive, the deflection based on constitutional rights is very likely. Everything you brought up here about the impact of the rhetoric & access to guns to the hope of Gen Z rings true to me.
If we look at that part -- profit motive -- and run it against nearly every question we have about current events, it feels so very heavy. Almost everyone who is found to have lied about something had a lot of money on the table to lose if the truth came out.
I have been sitting on this for a few days now, and I still have not been able to formulate an insightful comment. As a teacher, I had to talk to my students in the aftermath of Sandy Hook and Parkland, as well as whenever we had drills (thankfully my state does not have active fire drills, only those run by school personnel). But even those situations were so traumatizing for my students. My heart has been broken so many times and 'thoughts and prayers' do nothing to mend them. I firmly believe that significant social change is needed to prevent these - and other - not-random events such as overdoses and other deaths of despair. Thank you for your thoughts, Angie. Also getting my gears turning.
Melanie, I really appreciate that you brought up the other not random events & deaths of despair. For me, these are linked to a collective illness we are experiencing and we can't address this with individual parenting methods (as Imei said above) or personal choices, this is going to take societal-level change. I'm so sorry you had to carry the weight of talking to students about these shootings. We are a nation of broken-heartedness.