If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
As the nation once again struggles to wring some clarity from yet another blood-soaked story, it strikes me that two such formidable institutions, a state government and a major motion picture studio, might join forces to find a solution.
Why is it when we give in to our most intense impulses and extreme fantasies, we're always told it's toward something vile?
When looking for amazing stories about dogs, I came upon Shanda, a golden retriever, who served as mayor of Guffey, Colorado from 1993-1998.
Victims and survivors of tragedy are awe-inspiring teachers of humanity. It is the job of the rest of us to be the students and to learn as much as we possibly can from their extraordinary feats of courage.
In the days ahead, we should not look at the polling coverage and simply throw up our hands. On the contrary, there are many ways to improve our current gun laws without infringing on the rights of law-abiding citizens.
This is not an easy discussion. But after the hymns and songs, shrines and warmth, pain, suffering, and attempts for comfort, maybe we should finally ask the cold, hard, dispassionate, and oh-so-very-real questions about the place in which we want to live.
There doesn't seem to be a way out of this conundrum for the Democratic Party. To get enough power to enact gun control, Democrats must not run on their support for gun control. Catch-22.
It was a telling measure of how out of my element I was discussing the weather that the conversation I understood best was when a physicist tried to explain what the Higgs Boson actually is.
Colin Goddard was shot four times during 2007 Virginia Tech massacre that left 32 people dead. He now works with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Don't call the alleged Aurora murderer a monster. Do not separate him from the human family. It is too easy, to self-satisfying, to simply condemn him and be done with it.
It goes without saying that those who are wounded, those who have died, the families of victims and emergency responders are in need of our prayer. But I would add that a call to prayer is far more than a polite and consoling gesture.
Making gun laws even more lax than they currently are, is by no means anywhere near close to the right answer to the plaguing weapons conundrum this country faces every day.
Can each of us see the tragedy in Colorado and, instead of wagging fingers, look within our individual and communal soul? How often do we yield to the assassin's voice? Are we willing to confess our responsibility and abandon our growing quest for raw power?
We're not going to have our normal partisan talking points today. We're going to follow the lead set by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and we're just not going to go there today.
Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S. Firearm violence may cost our country as much as $100 billion a year. Toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns.
All the gun control in the world will mean nada if we as Americans do not come together and have a national conversation about the root causes of violence, where it comes from, what fosters it, what each of us does in our own ways to spread it.
