A Conversation We All Need To Have.

Earlier this week, 19 school children and two adults were killed in a mass shooting in Uvalde Texas. Ten days before that, a self-described white supremacist explicitly targeting black customers at a Buffalo supermarket, mowed down thirteen people, killing ten, in the space of seven minutes. And before that…

and before that…

and before that.

It keeps happening: Domestic terrorism waged with military-grade weaponry against our children, our families, our communities, and our sense of safety. And we – by and through our government – have done exactly zero to stop it. And each time, essays and analyses by thoughtful, informed individuals, explaining (for the 100th time) why our government is unable or unwilling or unlikely to do anything about it. Addressing this problem requires a federal response, and it requires challenging a disingenuous, illogical, and ahistorical interpretation of the second amendment.

And so, it will keep happening. Likely with increasing regularity.

We know the cost of continuing inaction. We live with it, each of us assuming or hoping that it won’t be our child, our parent, our sister or brother or friend, ourselves who is killed while at school, at work, doing the Saturday shopping, attending a prayer meeting or sitting in a movie theatre. Because what else can we do?

And so, it will keep happening.

I have to hope that there will be a tipping point. When our outrage, heartbreak, and justified fear overcomes the powerful, institutionalized inertia of the arms industry and a fragmented political system where some players derive power and prestige from furthering a fantasy of the rugged ‘sovereign citizen.’

I hope so – but I do not know it to be so.

I hope so, not just because I fear for myself and my community, but also for my country and this great experiment in representative government, the purpose of which was outlined nearly 250 years ago: “…to form a more perfect government, establish Justice, ensure domestic tranquility, [ and ] provide for the common defense.”  The proliferation of private arms, including but not limited to assault weapons, and the inability or unwillingness to impose reasonable civil restrictions on access to and use of those arms, is the mark of an increasingly impotent and fundamentally uncivil society. And one that is not positioned to “promote the general welfare [or] secure the Blessings of Liberty” for ourselves, much less our posterity. 

When I started this article, I did not think that I had words for this most recent unspeakable atrocity.  I was wrong about that, but words are insufficient. At this raw moment, I do not want to cite scholarly articles and statistics demonstrating how the United States continues to be an outlier among nations as it relates to gun violence; or quantify the actual cost of our political inaction. Instead, I want to close with some resources for the words that may most immediately matter to many: how to talk with our children about this phenomenon.

Because this will keep happening, and it is a conversation that we all need to have.

• Helping Children Cope: Talking about Violence and Tragedy in the News (Minnesota Children’s Museum)
• A Kid’s Book About School Shootings (A Kids Co. Free download)
• How to talk to your kids about school shootings (Washington Post)

And a resource from the American Psychological Association for adults coping with this collective and individual trauma (because we all need it).