If you've been anywhere in the US the past few days, you've heard about the school shooting in Sandy Hook, CT. We don't really have a tv, so the majority of my information about the shooting comes from facebook posts and online articles. I just wanted to share a few thoughts about it.
For future reference ... or for those who haven't heard about the shooting ... on Friday, December 14th, a man entered a Sandy Hook Elementary school classroom and shot and killed 20 first graders and 6 adults. This is an unspeakable tragedy - honestly no words come to me. I cannot even fathom the pain and the loss that the families and friends of everyone involved must be feeling.
Within hours of the shooting, people started debating whether we should be allowed to carry guns or not. Some people argue that the shooting would not have happened or been nearly as bad is someone within the school had been armed. Others argue for stricter gun laws that may have prevented the shooter from getting a gun in the first place.
By the next day, people were pointing fingers - saying that these things only happen because God was taken out of schools and there's no prayer in the classrooms. They are saying that if we still prayed to God and taught the Bible in public schools then maybe this shooter wouldn't have done this.
(Of course, there's also the radical groups such as Westboro Baptist Church who claim that this whole tragedy is God's judgement on this nation, and they are planning on picketing the children's funerals.)
My reaction to all these? Shame. Frustration. Even a bit of anger.
Over two dozen people died needlessly - most of them young children - and you're using their deaths to get on your soapbox and promote your own belief system? How incredibly callous and unfeeling.
Now is a time for mourning - for grieving and for supporting the families and friends of the victims. Not for politics or religious battles or grand-standing.
After that ... then we can figure out how to prevent this from happening again. Not because of this shooting, but because it should never have happened at all.
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Now I'm going to go against what many of the people in my circles believe. I grew up hearing the belief that there was no such thing as a "mental illness". That anything that was wrong in the brain was either demon possession or the results of a sinful life; the only cure was God.
There were some grey areas - mental disabilities such as Down Syndrome or Autism were regarded as sympathetic. But illnesses such as depression, asbergers, bi-polar, etc. did not exist.
And that is something that I disagree with. Every other part of our bodies can get sick or fail us - why should our brain be any different? All it takes is an imbalance in chemicals and hormones to mess us up horribly in the head.
Thankfully, this is not something I've had to experience; neither John nor I suffer from any of this. But I've read up on a lot of it. And while there is help out there (once you get past the sometimes-crushing stigma of having a mental illness), that help is often only available for people with "normal" mental illnesses. And often can only be available if people want help - which many people who are not well think they don't need.
Article: "I am Adam Lanza's Mother" by Liza Long
Currently, in the US, there are no real options available for people whose mental health may cause them to injure themselves or others. The way things are now, we have to wait until they "snap" so that we can put them in jail. At which point it may be too late.
I hardly think that that's a good policy. For anyone.
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You might think I'm being a bit hypocritical - condemning others for using this tragedy, and then speaking up myself. And maybe I am.
Nothing can justify the taking of lives. I mourn for each of the people who died ... and I mourn that someone felt that there was no other way to ease his own pain than to cause so much pain for others.
Article: "Tragic Violence and Empathy" Nurshable blog
But surely, if we wanted to prevent things like this happening in the future - shouldn't we spend our energy trying to help people so they never get this desperate? That we see that they get the help that they need?
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