Enough and Done

Yesterday morning I woke up to the news of what is now being called the largest mass shooting in our nation's history.  The story was on the radio as I made breakfast.  It was on my Facebook feed as I checked on it at work.  It was on the radio again as I cooked dinner.  Discussion of it was absent at my evening rehearsal, but then I was confronted with it again from multiple sources when I went back to work to finish a few things before finally returning home to crawl in bed.

I was not surprised this shooting happened.  In all the coverage I heard in and around Las Vegas, nobody sounded surprised.

You know what did surprise me a little?  I had no tears for this event.  None.  I am fatigued.  I was distressed in the abstract.  I was sad for the victims and their families in a general way.

Tired of This

There's been another mass shooting.  Are you wondering which one I'm talking about?  Does it matter at this point?

Discussions of gun violence in this country are wearing me down.

The disconnection between what I see and feel and how people talk about the issue publicly makes me hopeless most days.  I try to understand, and speak up periodically, but this is one area where I don't believe anymore I can have any impact.  It's beyond depressing.

My Two Cents on Guns

During the recent theater shootings in Aurora I was blissfully unplugged from the news.  I was visiting my parents and we did not have the TV or radio on.  The newspapers delivered to the door kept us about a day behind the current events.  At one point I went online to check email and discovered the horrible story after the president had already addressed the nation and the usual unpleasant squabbling had begun in the wake of such gun related tragedy.  I closed my computer and turned my focus to the puppet show my kids were putting on, and sitting with my dad, and finding the kids' goggles before going to the pool.  The nightmare in Aurora would be there after my vacation and I didn't see the point of letting it in early.

Now the mass shooting of the moment in the news isn't across the country.  It's the next zip code over, and just miles down on the road that runs by our home.  A Sikh temple in Oak Creek, WI, just south of Milwaukee, was attacked by at least one gunman, and although at this moment there aren't too many details available, we know six innocent people are dead.  I don't have the luxury of turning away because now the nightmare is in my own community.  It's horrifying.

I've been trying to process some of the rhetoric that's been flying around in the aftermath of so much pointless suffering, and I feel like working through my thoughts on guns.  I have no legislative power and threaten anybody's rights on this issue, so these opinions are just that and nothing more.  If I push someone's buttons try not to take it personally.