I guarantee that the words of this blog post will upset people. It is my sincere expectation and hope that one way that our country learn this important lesson. The minute we are born we stop having a monopoly on our space. The minute we are born we begin to live amongst others and so we no longer get to dictate that everything in the world go the way that we want them to go. From an early age we learn the skill of negotiating and working things out with others. This is a very important skill and one that we all need to work on from time to time. But here in America we seem to live in a society where compromise is not a value… it is the antithesis of value. We live in a society that sees everything is either black or white and no where in the middle. It is a pity that that is the world we are building for our children.
Today we mourn nine lives that were stolen from us. And we pray for another nine that are healing. And rather than having a discussion about healing and helping curb our ills… we are too busy discussing why we cannot do anything to fix this stain on our society. It is reprehensible. Let me be very clear. I do not like guns. I do not support owning them. And I do not agree that it is a sacred right. BUT!!!!! I am one person with one opinion. On the other side you have the polar opposite opinions and they are entitled to those ideas. But that is not where we need to be. We need to be in the middle… In the grey… Where we can work together to solve problems.
The reality is that fixing our gun violence issue is not a simple task. It is not something that background checks and limits on types of guns alone will repair. We need to recognize that the second amendment allows for gun ownership. But we also need to see that no single amendment exists without limits on it. The first amendment has limits and so do all of the others. This is why I do not support the ACLU or the NRA or any body that sees the written word as more sacred than human life.
It is time that more Americans make sacrifices to secure more of our population. You can make believe all you want that owning a gun will make you safer but in reality it won’t. We are not trained to shoot when we are being pursued… We are not trained how to shoot when innocent bystanders are near the culprit… We are not trained how to shoot from behind barricades and thus not be exposed to shots being fired back at us. In fact unless we keep our gun out at all times and our finger is ready and on the trigger the reality is that the criminal will kill us before we get a shot off.
I readily admit that we cannot take all of the guns away and that the majority of guns used in crimes are used by people who acquired them illegally. But there are common sense options at our disposal:
1) Mandatory background checks for all guns sold in our country at the federal level so all states have the same info about all people.
2) Mandatory sale of gun safe sold with the gun.
3) Informing the authorities if a gun is stolen from your house. If you don’t inform the authorities you are held accountable for the use of that gun. This is actually the way to get people to lock guns in safes and thus there will be no worries of theft and being held accountable for the use of the gun in a crime.
4) 100% parity of mental health coverage and a rapid destigmatization of mental health.
5) Media needs to be held accountable for the garbage that they manufacture and the violence that they encourage.
6) School based learning in elementary school about conflict resolution and also anti-violence education. Schools should be zero-tolerance zones for violent behavior and talk.
There is so much more that we can do and we must do it because we are a society that from 2004 to 2013 we have lost 316,545 lives to guns. Some of those are suicides, some are accidents and most are violent. And while there are other means of killing people that can be used… A gun makes it easy and makes it massive. We have a war on terror and how many deaths have we had in our country during that same period from terrorism? 313. For every American life lost to terror we have more than 1,000 lost to guns. That isn’t just a problem… it is a tragedy.
Within the opening chapters of the Torah we learn of the first births followed very quickly with the first murder. When God asked Cain where was Abel, He didn’t mean in a physical location sense… He meant where was Abel in Cain’s heart??? Why was he able to lack love or at least sympathy for his brother. The Torah continues to speak to us today and so everyday God is asking us where are the other people in your heart and that you must make room in your heart for all of humanity.
We can do better and our souls and our God cry out to us to do better.
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