Tomorrow will be ten days since Jared Loughner shot Gabrielle Giffords in front of a Safeway store in Tucson, Arizon. I will not even say allegedly since he was caught red-handed, in the act of reloading his gun to shoot more people. He killed six people and wounded thirteen others, included Congresswoman Giffords, known as Gabby to her friends, and now it seems to all of us as well.
It's been an emotional journey, first with the chaos of the shooting itself, and then with the back and forth accusations in the body politic. The horror seemed to escalate, spiraling upward with the weirdest intensity that made no sense whatsoever. People from the tea party movement shrieking about individual responsibility and talk radio personalities insisting on their first amendment rights, only to have the victim in chief misuse a term with a very particular and painful meaning to Jewish people everywhere.
At the memorial service on Wednesday night President Obama spoke of a more civil and honest discourse, one that can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make those being remembered proud.
Now, only days afterward I look on Facebook and see all the same old nonsense though. I see the rhetoric starting to escalate, and I wonder if it will remain civil and honest. I see people just copying statements from others that seem to have little thought behind them, and I question if we will make it. I hope so. I want to believe. I try to be optimistic.
Here is the problem. I know that guns do not kill people, and that it takes a person to pull the trigger. But I also know that some people just should not have access to guns. Never. It does not matter about their Second Amendment rights. It is just the same as some people having lost their right to Liberty, winding up in a penitentiary. If we can figure out how to discern which people belong in the penitentiary for life -- and keep them there -- then why on earth can we not figure out which people should not have a gun because they are mentally unstable?
When I speak of GUN CONTROL, that is one of the things that I mean. Decide how to deal with the people who cannot be trusted because of their mental conditions, and then make sure they do not get their hands on them.
If this means it involves the government, so be it. If it means that gun sellers have to police themselves, do that. If it means there is a financial incentive, make that happen somehow. If it takes a waiting period to perform the background checks, that should not be a problem. If mental health facilities are not getting the records to the right place, then fix that problem. There should be no voluntary aspect or self-reporting to leave it to chance for the patient; that is why mental health facilities report everything. Crazy people simply cannot have access to guns -- ever.
The argument that inevitably surfaces is that people intent on finding a gun will get one anyway, illegally if necessary. This is where morality comes into play for me. I do not believe that "He'll get one anyway" is an excuse to do something immoral. It is not okay to give up or to look away and say "that's just the way things go" that Jared Loughner was able to purchase a gun. To me it is a moral duty to do everything possible to prevent guns from falling into the hands of people that should not have them.
That duty may impose different oblitations. It may require me as a parent to unload my gun and put in somewhere, locked and far away from the reach of children that I know live in my home or will be visiting in my home. It may require me to stop carrying one if my eyesight starts failing and I myself should no longer have one. (A shotgun at home -- well, that's a different story altogether. There's always the baseball bat I keep beside my bed.)
But access to guns by people with mental health issues is only one aspect of the tragedy in Tucson. The other, larger part of this problem is the mental health system in our country. Many years ago we had more people institutionalized, but we moved away from that model to releasing people back into the community. However, the community was supposed to provide support services and treatment to those folks. Anyone who has ever dealt with mental health issues knows the truth of the support system provided by the community. We should be able to call someone and report a person who is acting "crazy" or "scary" such as Jared Loughner.
Given the funding issues of today's world, if we called would anyone answer? So would the Jareds of Tomorrow get any help? Or would the report be provided to the proper authority to prevent him from getting a handgun and stop another Tucson?
My bet is this will be forgotten in the rush to cut budgets. With all the talk about Morality, there will be more emphasis on slashing funds as the "moral" thing to do, rather than properly funding mental health issues and taking care of keeping people safe. In other words Financial Morality will trump Protecting People Morality.
No comments:
Post a Comment