Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Yesterday I wrote a satirical piece about guns and gun regulation. Some people who read it didn’t get it. No, I wasn’t suggesting that stabbing 14 people was or ever could be a good thing…and I wasn’t trying to suggest that we really outlaw people…that would be like suggesting the eating of babies to solve world hunger…My point was that guns are dangerous because people use them to hurt each other and just because guns are inanimate objects that need people to operate them doesn’t mean that people should have free and easy access to them.

But now it’s time to get serious because yesterday, in my neighborhood, a 4 year old boy shot his 6 year old next door neighbor with a 22 caliber rifle. Scout’s honor, I kid you not. And Is my neighborhood next door to Fort Apache? No. Do I live in the middle of the Middle East? Nope. It’s just a quiet residential neighborhood 2 blocks from a grammar school in the suburban New Jersey town of Toms River.

Here in Central New Jersey we mostly expect to die from old age or traffic accidents or as you might have recently  read,  the slow and deadly ingestion of toxic waste and chemicals, but certainly not from random shootings… Today that little 6 year old boy died.

So  I ask you, is there anywhere in this country where anyone should ever expect to die from gunshot wounds? If you are a gun enthusiast and opposed to any and all gun regulation and laws then your answer is probably and sadly…yes. And your solution is also probably that only more guns for more people to defend themselves with, is the answer to gun violence.

You would probably also say that the reduction of guns or the strengthening of gun laws will be of no help because people are the ones who kill and not the guns…and many of you will go even so far as to say that the guns don’t make it any easier for people to do harm. Harmful people will do harm anyway, whether they have a gun or a knife or a rock or hammer etc…or whether they are 40, 14 or…even 4! And of course there is your favorite phrase…”If we outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns.”

To which I must finally say, Will you never learn anything?

If you own a gun then you have only three possible outcomes. Either you will be an outlaw and use your weapon to rob, kill or harm others or you will wait… wait… wait…and wait some more for that imagined glorious moment in your lives when you get the drop on the outlaw and kill or harm or scare the crap out of him yourself.

The third possible outcome is that someone who you love or care about will accidently or on purpose shoot someone else who you love or care about (possibly yourself)… or they will shoot a whole bunch of others for no apparent reason other than they have lost their minds and all sense of human decency.

That’s it. 3 possible outcomes and if you don’t think that all of them are bad then really where do you see this ending? Seriously. Don’t preach to me your second amendment rights. Offer some solutions please. And please offer some solutions that don’t make you sound like a moron.

But There is however a fourth outcome and that is that your gun is never used to rob or kill anyone at all… Because here in the 21st century you really don’t need guns…not for hunting for food, not for defending your country from foreign invaders, not for fending off  savages or slaves, or wild animals who roam your domesticated suburbs and cities…and if you don’t need it for those things you certainly don’t need it for practice…unless of course you want that gun to be ready to someday kill another human being…which again is a serious reason for you to think twice about yourself and about your views on humanity.

Guns and weapons of mutual destruction only serve to keep us primitive. Only by regulating our use and need and desire for them can we ever hope to someday become completely civilized.

And if you can’t understand that, then please, please, please… don’t ever have children… Because in the long run…that probably will help us all more than you may ever know.

The Last Refuge

VIOLENCE: exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse: injury by or as if by distortion, infringement, or profanation: intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force : vehement feeling or expression or an instance of such action or feeling : a clashing or jarring quality :

Once again it has taken a  public viewing of violence in action to move the individuals most responsible for that violence to take action to end it, even though it had been occurring for quite some time and known about by quite a few individuals, and that’s not even including the adult perpetrator and his adult victims, who obviously were all too aware about it too.

In case you are unaware of the specific incident of which I speak, I am referring to the recent firing of the Rutgers Men’s Basketball coach. Certainly there are and have been greater and more violent episodes in our society than this one… but perhaps it is our all too common belief that violence, when called by a sweeter name makes its stench more rosy… that allows for its constant acceptance by all of us in all of its various and insidious forms.

 

Our use of Violence in our society is almost as inexplicable as it is pervasive. It accomplishes nothing, leaves anger in its wake and only satisfies the one who uses it. And that satisfaction is almost always short lived and regrettable. And violence is also something that seems to require the immediate notice of many to even be seen or acknowledged as something that actually exists.

When experienced by the few the violent act almost always takes refuge in the deeper recesses of the brain… a shared secret among those who agree to be separate yet somehow equal, perpetrators.

Why we still resort to it is a question that by now we should have an answer and a solution to. It is a sad testament to our culture and humanity that we have not yet found one.

I have lived long enough and have worked with enough troubled and battered children to have realized that violence is not and can never be a motivational tool for any kind of positive learning experience, personal athletic improvement or moral achievement. Violence isn’t even a last resort. It’s a surrender. It’s a statement that says “I have no idea what to do!” And it truly is “the last refuge of the incompetent”.

 Rather than scorned or shunned by those who have felt its wrath it seems to be handed down from generation to generation like an inherited gene. And yet I have never met anyone who has ever sworn by its instructive value as in: “If I hadn’t been for that coach/parent/mentor’s abuse  in my youth I never would have developed the talents that I have today”

Whenever I see someone who is performing a task or involved in an instructive activity, resort or devolve into violence to make a point or a show or to add punctuation, I know that they have no idea what they are doing and that it’s time to walk away, get out of the way or move on to someone else.

There’s just no two ways about it… and until violence in all of its aberrant forms  is always and unequivocally equated with incompetence we will forever live in a world that will at best be one of two steps forward and one step back…and perhaps even more sadly the other way around.

 

 

When will we ever learn?

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
      -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

When will we ever learn that this is the only lesson that matters and that everything else in this world will fall into place once we finally get this lesson into our heads.

Violence and hate are not only the wrong answers they are not answers at all. They are reactions and instincts from our distant past and primitive brains. To declare ourselves to be truly enlightened, emotionally evolved and intelligent people we must learn to answer all questions with love and light, compassion and kindness. That is why we bring children into this world: To live and learn and do better than we did…and that is what we must teach them first and foremost and above all other things.

  “Think you can. Work hard. Get smart. Be kind. And have fun!”                                           – Sandy Hook Elementary school motto

Isn’t that what we all want?

Violence and hate will never secure that for us or our children or our families or our communities or our countries or our cultures or our religions, not in any place, nor at any date nor in any time.

Teach it now. Teach it everywhere. Teach it always.