Search
for Meaning
“In
all...disasters throughout time, man needs to attach meaning to
tragedy, no matter how inexplicable the event is.”
Nathaniel
Philbrick
Like everyone else in the
world, when disaster strikes, I try to make sense of it. I think we
humans do this because it gives us the illusion of control—if we
can explain it, then perhaps we can prevent it, or at the very least,
will be better prepared to respond to it the next time. But some
things are simply inexplicable. The mass killings in Las Vegas Sunday
night fall into that category for me.
We can rake back through
our history of constitutional rights protecting gun ownership; we can
blame the NRA and the lax and illegal markets for military style
weapons—blah, blah, blah. We can lament our lack of mental health
services, and our blame and shame campaign when it comes to mental
illness. We do that every time one of these horrors happens. We can
find all manner of things and people to blame, but the truth is that
there is no explanation, no justification, and no way to protect
innocent people when someone's mind cracks and they decide to unload
a cash of automatic weapons on total strangers.
The problem we have is a
moral one. The question: Why are we more inclined to protect an
individual's “right” to own an arsenal, than we are to protect
the rights of innocent people to go to a country music concert, or a
night club, or a public school in safety? Until we respond
differently to this fundamental flaw in our moral code, we will
continue to have massacres in our public spaces. As with all of our
other mass shootings, gun sales skyrocketed yesterday. These killings
have no meaning whatsoever if nothing changes in response to them.
Here is my prayer: May
the souls of the slain be blessed. May their families and loved ones
be comforted in their grief. May the hearts of those with the means
to change our laws be convicted by the spilling of innocent blood.
May each and every American examine their ethics with regard to our own weapons of mass destruction.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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