there are a lot of things in this world i don’t understand. currently topping the list is how someone can walk into an elementary school and murder children. i hope there’s a clear answer and an enemy we can all fight. but i know that sometimes the answer is nothing more than evil exists.
i don’t understand how the media can be so irresponsible in their reporting. what happened to fact checking? what happened to responsible journalism? i understand that people have an insatiable thirst for information, but it’s the media’s job to get this right. instead they misidentified the gunman, they got the gunman’s mother’s relationship to the school wrong, they reported that there was a second gunman. i get that the new era of social media doesn’t lend itself to exhaustive fact checking, but this cannot happen.
i don’t understand the people who post and tweet that blog post called “i am [the gunman]’s mother.” beyond the fact that her other posts are truly terrifying, how can you think it’s necessary–or even acceptable–to share the story of a woman destroying her son’s privacy and branding him as a future mass murderer? it’s humiliating and it’s wrong. mental health does need to be addressed, but not this way. (also, while on the topic of reposting, that morgan freeman quote? isn’t.)
i don’t understand the rush to legislation before we even have the facts. i also don’t understand people who direct others not to talk about it yet, that it’s too soon. people handle things differently. i think we shouldn’t discuss legislation as a direct consequence of this event because we don’t know all the facts yet. however, i’m not sure 30-round clips are necessary, and that position is not reliant on information yet to be gleaned from connecticut.
most of all, i don’t understand how 26 families will handle the holidays this year. 20 beautiful children won’t spend them with their families. 5 educators won’t make it home. and one family–the lanza family–must be facing unimaginable agony for the loss of nancy and for their connection to, and loss of, the gunman. (i suggest susan klebold’s piece for a different perspective.)
but what i do understand? that mass shootings are not growing in frequency. it doesn’t make them any less horrific, but it is worth noting. that, even if violent mental illness wasn’t a cause here, we still need to reform how we treat mental illness. and that starts at home. please stop using crazy as an adjective.
requiem aeternam dona eis, domine
et lux perpetua luceat eis
firecracker's follies 