Headlines: this week’s target
Sikh, Muslim, Jew, Christian, Baha’i, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Pagan, Atheist…Black, White, Asian, Latino, African, Australian…resident of Tucson, Aurora, Milwaukee. All have been targets. If you’re angry, fearful, frustrated or even hateful, visit a gym and pound a punching bag, take a five mile run or a cold shower, or, better yet, volunteer at a homeless shelter or senior center, write a letter to a Peace Corps member abroad, take a group of kids to a museum or a basketball court, take a deep breath, drink a glass of water. Throw the hand gun or semi-automatic assault rifle in the lake or turn it into the police. Read a book to a blind person. Tell a joke and make someone laugh. Find a park or field and lie down in the grass, look up and try to figure out where the air around your face turns into the sky around the world.
Random Mass Shooting has become a regular news headline. What are we doing wrong? Is it gun control? Is it economic duress? Are there deep flaws in our social fabric? Over and over again.
I’m sure people in Aurora, Colorado or Milwaukee thought of a mass shooting as something that happens elsewhere. Doesn’t happen to us. Many years ago–in 1966–I was hitchhiking with a friend (sorry Mom) to Mexico from NYC. In Oklahoma, we caught a ride with a man driving a pick up truck (complete with gun rack along the back of the cab). Somewhere south of Dallas, the driver was chatting on his CB and said to us, “They’re shooting hitchhikers in Austin today.” Or, to our NYC ears, that’s what it sounded like he was saying with his southwestern accent. He offered to take us around to the south end of the city before he dropped us off. A day or two later, we heard about the Austin Bell Tower shooting–the first “modern” mass shooting in the U.S. Not a “hate” crime exactly, like the attack on the Sikh congregation, but perpetrated by an angry, hateful and very sick man. That was 1966. This sort of thing has been going on for decades.
Horrified by the attack on the Sikh congregation in Wisconsin? The Sikh Coalition is helping people organize vigils across the country on Wednesday, August 8.
What do we need to do differently?
Tags: austin bell tower shooting, hate crimes, random shootings, sikhism, world religions
Sadly, Ellen, there is very little we can do.
Maybe the best we can do is to not let the crazies drive us crazy and cause us to act as crazy as they do.
Hate is a form of insanity.
What little can we do? Make it illegal to buy or sell automatics to civilians. Better background checks before someone can purchase a gun.
The Seed of Evil
The seed of evil lies asleep
Inside each human heart
Waiting for a single thought
To make the growing start
That thought, at first so innocent
Belies its awesome force
To fill the world with suffering
And alter history’s course
That thought is this, so mark it well:
We are separate from each other
From nature and from humankind
From sister and from brother
As long as we are separate
More righteous and superior
Then those who do not measure up
Are made to feel inferior
And then it’s just a slippery slope
Of mounting persecution
That starts with words and ill intent
And ends in execution
The seed of evil grows foliage
With poison thorns and spears
When watered by corrupted thought
And fertilized by fears
It is a most pernicious weed
So hard to decimate
So sharp the spines of war and strife
So deep the roots of hate
But take away its nourishment
And soon the plant will die
Reject the thoughts of separateness
Expose the vicious lie
And hold fast to the sacred truth
Lest untruth us bedevil
That we are one with all there is
And equal on that level
Jon Montan February 2004
From 68-73 I worked with a fellow junior officer, while stationed in CA, who was attending UT Austin during the shooting incident. He immediately recognized the sound of high powered rifle fire and while standing behind a hand rail made of 2 inch steel pipe was scanning the area to ascertain where the shots were originating. He located the source at the top of the tower and stood there watching for several minutes until he realized that the shooter had shot people behind himself.
Contrary to the oft touted inane mantra of the “keep the government out of my business crowd” GUNS DO KILL PEOPLE! Agreed that humans are the purposeful perpetrators of most such shootings; however, there are many inadvertent/accidental shootings by young and old as well as many purposeful suicides and attempts. Logical and rational licensing/tracking of all weapons would likely vastly reduce the carnage in America from our insistence on easily accessed prolific quantities of guns and ammunition.
Two of the most obvious changes are (1) National/Federal universally applied gun procurement and ownership laws (enforced) which rationally limit and license/track all sales/purchases both private and commercial (2) Restrict the production of weapons to preclude the black market procurement and distribution of such.
These are logical and implementable methodologies; however, the “keep the government out of my business crowd” will immediately start screaming because they what? don’t want the government to know how many guns and how much ammunition they have? or is it they don’t want their neighbors to know? The weapons manufacturers will be incensed that the government would restrict them from manufacturing and selling highly profitable and legal items, just because they kill people, when the cigaret manufacturers are allowed to sell a product that kills perhaps 25-50 times as many people a year as do guns in this country.
I do not believe, as Pete asserts, that there is little that we can do; however, I do believe that the forces of “greed” and low intestinal fortitude override positive actions that one might expect based upon the frequency with which one is exposed to the trite spoken/written “the loss of one human life to ______ is one too many”.
Well said Jon. I would say the evil is selfishness but selfishness is needed for self-preservation. There is lack of hope, a lack of trust to the point where one decides it is necessary to take personal action to preserve something. Suicide is selfishness and a different avenue.
So there is a need to learn what improves comfort levels, how do people become able to trust? They see respect. They see honor. They see people they can trust. They see things that dispell their fears.
This is just a thought.
A high school requirement should be for students to witness the carnage that comes into hospital emergency departments from acts of this type of violence and from injuries that drunk drivers cause. It may have some impact.
Part of the problem is that there is a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of many about what the second amendment means. There is a popular argument that the founders intended for all citizens to have guns for, among other reasons, to ‘protect themselves from tyranny’. There is no evidence that the founders contemplated allowing armed citizens the right to rise up against the government, (Whiskey Rebellion? Civil War?). The government has demonstrated decisively on numerous occasions throughout our history that armed insurrection is not part of the second amendment. This wrongheaded assertion is used to justify assault weapons and large ammunition capacity magazines every time the gun discussion is resurrected by the latest tragedy. There are people out there who believe that anything to do with firearms is just, ‘… none of the government’s business’. Like many constitutional matters, we have 310 million different interpretations about what the document actually says and means.