Colorado's Mass Murder redux

Colorado isn't the only place where heavily armed shooters have fired on unsuspecting people unable to escape, but because of Columbine the State is inescapably linked with it. Undoubtedly, the recent killings of Aurora movie goers will only confirm this association.

If the Aurora attacks follow the usual path, the media will be full of hand wringing over the availability of guns. Letters to the editor about the decline of moral virtue will follow: some will plead with readers not to lose their faith in God. But then, after the victims have been buried and the media moved on, it will be business as usual.

Since I live just down the road from the theater and since I know someone who was there, it seems to me that this might be a useful time to take a different approach to how we react to this kind of senselessness.

Responses to attacks on a community like this take several forms. First, there is what I call noise. This the mindless spouting of the self-serving. It adds nothing to the debate or to our self-understanding.

For example, we have already heard from one legislator who claimed that the massacre occurred because the Judaic-Christian tradition is under attack. Is he serious? Given that tradition's violence and sowing of hatred, it is more likely to be the one doing the attacking. Besides, fundamentalist Christians to the contrary, this is not exclusively a Christian country even if the Puritans tried to make it so.

Then there was the NRA which again  shouted the tired old saw that guns don't kill and that if one person in the theater had been armed, the gun fight could have ended with only the shooter being killed. The completely overlooks the fact that man was wearing full body armor, that one pistol is rather outgunned by an automatic, and that more people might have been killed in a crossfire.

We have yet to hear from the hate radio broadcasters, but they're predictable too. They will try to make political hay out of people's feelings of powerlessness and anger. If they can blame the their political opponents and roil their base, the money will flow from their sponsors. Along this line, there might even be some pastors who will claim that God was punishing a corrupt society because of movies of the type being shown that night.--that one comes straight out of the Medieval church's playbook.

Noise, then, is the hyped up, unexamined, babbling of those who see a way to use what has happened to personal advantage. It is cold and manipulative, seeing people and events merely as fodder for on-going prejudices.

The second response is what I call analytical. It's what the media do in the aftermath of something like this. They pour details down on our heads. They will interview, photograph, and try to create immediacy. "The closest thing to being there," they might say.  In the opinion columns, they will speculate, and they will lecture us on whatever their favorite cause happens to be: America has a shocking lack of services for the mentally ill, they might say.  Or, they may try subtly blaming those people around the killer: Why didn't they notice something was wrong? Why did he slip through the cracks?  They may raise questions but will have no answers for us, only stabs at explanation.

To give it its due, the analytical may be the closest thing we have to something like a congregation of people who want to know why. But while pastors of the congregation might urge faith and belief on the constituents, all the media can do is keep turning up what's known in the hopes that some telling detail will make a difference to someone.

Finally, the third response is the most difficult but also the most valuable. It is what I call the integral, not only because it deals with the nature of what is, but because it tries to do it with integrity as opposed just to ethics. I don't mean here sitting around a campfire singing kumbaya and saying we are all to blame. What I'm describing is the approach of those few individuals who are clear-eyed about what is happening to the country and try put it into the context of self-reflection and moral choice. In other words, people who have the wisdom, authority, position, courage, and earned respect to pose the questions that need to be asked if we are to move forward. Unfortunately, they are few indeed because the voices of noise are so loud and most of those who might lead can't see beyond their own self-interest either.

It seems to me that the most important question we can ask is why we can't look at ourselves and ask how we got in this mess. Why is it that killing people is an acceptable if not expected way for someone deranged to gain release from frustration/depression/failure/alienation (you name it)? and Why is is it equally acceptable if not expected for some other deranged person to defend to the death the right for free access to attack weapons whose only reason for existence is to kill and maim as many people as possible?

Lots of people with larger bully pulpits than I have already called for national conversation about who we are, what we value, and where the country is headed. It's a national discussion we need to have. Are we, for example, willing to live in a fortress so that every individual can do exactly what they want (including buying unlimited guns and ammunition) at any time they so choose? This is a serious question involving the boundaries between the individual and society. It's useless to approach it as gun control--that just sets off the paranoia. As a question of responsibility and boundaries, maybe we can get somewhere. But where is the statesman who can lead this discussion?

As many will hasten to say, this crime could have occurred anywhere. That may be true enough, but let's be honest about it. Someone interested in harming others for the media coverage will find greater satisfaction conducting an attack in an urban setting. For one thing, the cities provide much more chance of cornering people because there are more people to be cornered. However, it's those living in rural areas who are most likely to be strident about guns--should they be dictating national policy when they aren't the ones most likely to be taken out? Is there something inherently unfair in the way our politics is structured? We'll never know because no one takes on the issue.

The founding fathers of this country debated very hotly the topics of what rights human beings had just by the fact of being born. Our issues are different and we need to revisit our Constitution to see what still can serve us. The social compact in the Constitution was meant to be revisited. As one wag aptly asked: Does the right to bear arms mean I can have nuclear weapons?  We can well ask--what is the limit and where is the line to be drawn?

We need the courage to have a national debate on the nature of freedom and liberty. Surely, we can live up to our own founding principles. Either that, or we will answer Abraham Lincoln's question of whether this nation can survive by saying, no, it cannot. We buried it under prejudice, ignorance, and blind tribalism.