No Simple Answers

The Sandy Hook story continues...as it should.  I've posted on it in the last week and it still is fresh in my thoughts.  It was such a devastating and unthinkable disaster, that I believe (or maybe hope to believe) that some things will change.  Two issues that are getting front and center play are gun control and mental illness.  Both of these issues are controversial and impact on our rights.  But they must be dealt with.

I frequently look to others for inspiration.  One who rarely disappoints is Peggy Noonan.  She writes weekly for WSJ and periodically on her blog.  Her post is, I beleive, an inspiration.  It's titled simply, Newtown.  You can read it here:  http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2012/12/17/newtown/?mod=WSJBlog
In the aftermath of this terrible tragedy, I think she makes three very valid points

     "...we must provide more treatment options for parents of children whom they know to be mentally unstable and potentially dangerous. If your child is hungry, you can get food. If your child breaks his leg, the hospital is there. But if your child is psychologically sick or mentally unbalanced and beginning to show signs of violent behavior, you’re more or less on your own. We have to change this. We are making more sick teenagers and young men now, not fewer, and this is going to continue as our culture breaks up. I think we all know this, deep down."  I saw a very applicable and scary story that someone posted on Facebook titled "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother".  You can read it here:  http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/12/15/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother  The choices offered today to help kids like this are unsat.  It must change.

     Second..."Congress should move quickly—really, right away—to ban something almost every member would ban next week if they were given a clean, short, unambiguous piece of legislation. Two years ago, after Tucson, I urgedPresident Obama to make such a bill a priority in his 2011 State of the Union Address.
A hot subject then was the polarizing nature of our political rhetoric. But I wrote:

Normal people are not afraid of a lowering of discourse in political speech. They don’t like it, but it’s not keeping them up nights. Normal people are afraid of nuts with guns. That keeps them up nights. They know our society has grown more broken, families more sundered, our culture more degraded, and they fear it is producing more lost and disturbed young people. They fear those young people walking into a school or a mall with a semiautomatic pistol with an extended clip.
What civilian needs a pistol with a magazine that loads 33 bullets and allows you to kill that many people without even stopping to reload? No one but people with bad intent. Those clips were banned once; the president should call for reimposing the ban. . . . The president should seize the moment and come out strong for a ban."

     Third..."everyone who has warned for a quarter-century now that our national culture has become a culture of death—movies, TV shows, videogames drenched in blood and violence—has been correct. Deep down we all know it, as deep down we know our culture has a bad impact on the young and unstable who aren’t sturdy enough to withstand and resist sick messages and imagery.  When Hollywood wants to discourage cigarette smoking it knows exactly how to do it, because it knows exactly how much power it has to deliver cultural messages. When Hollywood wants to encourage environmentalism it knows how to do it. But there’s a lot of money to be made in violence, and God knows there’s a market for it—in fact, the more people are fed violence the bigger the market grows, so it’s an ever hungry, always growing market. This is exactly what you want if you’re in a tough business and don’t have a conscience.
Republicans have no sway in Hollywood, none. They are figures of mockery, sometimes deservedly so. If they get into the act here, Hollywood will be able to ignore them, and nothing will change. But the Democrats and the president are in a different position. They could change things for the better."

I think all three suggestions are right.  We have to do something about the state of mental illness.  There are a lot of kids out there who need help but are not getting it.  They fall through the crack.  We also could do some quick things on gun control.  Magazines are a start.  But I really don't get why the average person needs a semi-automatic rifle.  An AR-15 Bushmaster is used for one thing...to kill a lot of people.  And I think the way to change the culture is to use all tools at our disposal, including the Hollywood crowd. 

My sense is that this time it's different.  The sadness is turning to outrage.  The need to make changes is compelling.  The question is whether or not we have the guts to do it...