This is an opinion column.
The five gallon bucket wasn’t particularly comfortable even with the swivel seat on the lid. As the shadows grew long, it wouldn’t be long before doves flew across the corn field at the Edmonson’s dairy farm. “Boom!” The first shot set off a chorus of shotguns as the birds fell from the sky. As descending lead pellets peppered my position, I appreciated my eye protection and the trusted hunters in the field with me.
That fond memory clashes wildly with the increasingly familiar images of suffering and death from the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. I cannot bear the thought of any of my boys not coming home one day from school. Most of us can’t. We live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. It’s not supposed to be a country where we have to turn our schools into prisons simply to protect our children.
Another shooter dead doesn’t feel like justice. It’s just an open wound. Nobody should simply move along from what’s happening with increasing regularity. In 2020, more than 45,000 people perished from firearms in the United States–the highest number of gun deaths ever recorded. The number includes 23,000 suicides and more than 19,000 homicides.
We’re not just imagining it. The violence is getting worse.
No sane American feels anything but sorrow over homicides or suicides. We’re rightly outraged that anyone could commit such vile acts. Yes, a single attack on a school garners national attention, but the aggregate data on gun violence is equally as shocking.
In 2020, one out of every 1,000 Black males ages 15–34 was shot and killed. That is a mind-blowing statistic. That kind of information leads so many of us to the righteous conclusion that we should do something to stop the literal bleeding.
I’ve worked in Congress and with state legislators in red and blue states. Our disagreements over gun policy are both passionate and largely intractable. Democrats want to ratchet down on gun ownership as well as the overall number of guns in America. Republicans seek to protect the rights of their constituents to defend themselves from increasing threats. Common ground is difficult to find.
Making policies along the edge of constitutional rights is and should be difficult. Our strident national disagreement over abortion is another prime example. A difference in gun policy doesn’t mean lawmakers and their supporters either hate the Constitution or accept the death of children at school.
Instead of mourning the tragedy in Texas, we beat each other senseless in the public square.
Republicans have the blood of dead children on their hands. Democrats facing ugly midterms are looking to score political points before the bodies are even buried. It’s a mental illness. It’s bullying. It’s absent parents. It’s the media. It’s social nihilism.
It is us…or at least what we’ve become.
What could possibly possess an 18-year-old to shoot his grandmother in the face and then kill 21 people? We act like we don’t know, but we see and feel it all around us. America’s shining city on a hill has fallen into a sea of darkness. Some of us are treading the murky waters the best we can. Many others are drowning. Climbing out and putting the beacon of hope back where it belongs seems like an impossible task.
We keep expecting our politicians will do the work for us. No law or policy is going to fix what’s broken. It might address some of the symptoms, but our sickness runs deep.
Hunting in that field all those years ago, I knew I had people looking out for me. I had a community who cared about my future. I can name one individual after another who paid attention to my developing character and intervened when I was headed down the wrong path.
If we’re going to change our nation’s tragic trajectory, it’s not enough to just look out for ourselves and our families. We’ve got to be there for each other in ways that put the interest of others ahead of our own. When we see people struggling, alone, and angry, we must reach out even where the law doesn’t demand it. That’s a little bit of light that goes a long way in illuminating the way out of the darkness.
I’m not sure whether my boys and so many like them across our nation will have enough people to help them develop into the men our culture needs. The teen who murdered two teachers and 19 students at a school in Texas clearly didn’t.
