This post is dedicated to the families and friends of the nine victims in last week’s horrific act of terror in Charleston. It’s my way of sending condolences, of expressing solidarity in favor of stricter gun control laws.
Guns in church = a most hideous oxymoron. Murdering worshippers = an act of unspeakable terror.
We seek “answers.” In this case, racial hatred. We have questions. In other cases…?
Toy guns = ?
During a trip abroad we were in a train station when I saw a boy (in the photo) about six years old with a toy gun strapped to his back.
He skipped around the staircase, played at the balustrade as if it were a lookout for targets. He seemed comfortable wearing the sharp-angled toy like a piece of clothing. But it wasn’t. It was a “toy” gun that looked more real than any plastic gun Hoyt and I had ever seen anywhere. The details of the trigger, the substantial barrel, the weight of the thing as it hung on the child’s body. It gave us chills.
Questions
1) Are adults naïve about how children’s “play” guns affect them?
2) Are parents unwittingly desensitizing their own children to guns?
Yes, we were looking at only a toy, but this child with a replica rifle disturbed me. Why?
Like most of us, I’ve seen kids play Army before, boys and girls with plastic pistols and fake rifles, but besides this gun looking particularly real, the child’s casual behavior (well, he was only a little kid, what do you expect?) caused a knot in my gut. Me—an adult American uptight over a plastic gun? Silly!
Then his little sister joined him…unfazed by her brother’s toy rifle. Maybe in their country boys not much older must carry weapons for defense. I considered that.
You may remember that in 2014 news reports like this from ABC told us, “A 12-year-old boy who was shot by Cleveland police officers while carrying a replica gun in a park playground has died, hospital officials said today.”
Who is responsible in the chain of events that enabled the Charleston tragedy? Anyone besides the killer? We know one thing: lawmakers waffling on the issue of gun control are not helping.
What does it take for our attitudes and gun laws to change?
Dear people of Charleston, and every community who has suffered gun-related devastations—which is most every city and town across America—my town stands with you in your grief.
We hope with you for healing.
We urge lawmakers to DO SOMETHING NOW TO TIGHTEN GUN LAWS.
We refuse to become bitter or disillusioned.
Let our hearts suffer with Charleston in empathy but our mouths speak against laws that make access to guns easy for killers.
See you next time.
Billy Williams
I was reading another post on this subject on which comments had been closed. The only thing I refer to directly from it is my simple Spock logic thinking when I hear a place with strict gun laws referred to as having more shootings than another place with less strong rules. Assuming the accounts are accurate, I wonder if people get the cause and effect right. That is, are the stricter laws not working because there are more shootings, or are the strict laws needed BECAUSE there are more shootings? The answer would require further checking, yet some seem to put the cause part on the side that favors their personal beliefs, without checking anything.
I have had a change in thinking the last few years on more subjects than just my Way life. My original awakening to the degree of abuse that happened in the Way, much under my nose, required me to develop a greater sensitivity to the hurtings of others, being that I did not undergo the worst of the abuse, and refused to believe it happened for years and decades…because like many, I believed my leaders could do no wrong. There is one person I know of in whom I have seen an amazing sensitivity to the hurts of others, and a desire to do all she can to help those who are hurting. I have never met her, although I saw/heard this person speak close up in town last year, and have met a lifelong friend of hers several times. She is Melissa Gilbert, known to many as “Half-Pint”, but with a life much bigger than that role. One thing she is big on is the hurt done by guns. Not only by those who would hurt others, but by those who ignore those hurts. Her lifelong work to help ill and otherwise hurting children, I believe, helps explain part of her amazing sensitivity. During her talk, she expressed a burning desire to do what she can on this and other subjects by inspiring her audience to seek the wisdom to know what we can change, and the courage to know the difference between that and what we can’t change. The serenity prayer. Later last year she launched a run for Congress, although she had to withdraw for health reasons(specifically, severe frequent pain from a back injury). Yes, she is a politician also now, but one of the few I would trust for saying…and doing…what she means, and meaning what she says (no intention to get into a certain Way International canned phrase here!).