GUEST EDITORIAL
There are moments of silence to honor those who have died. Moments of silence to focus on remembering our people, alive, vibrant.
In our country we also have have moments of silence because we’ve run out of words to say.
The “thoughts and prayers” pat has been repeated too often. Too many times, out of too many mouths in those we elect to solve our problems.
If mass shooters aren’t a problem in our country, then we don’t know what is. We are coming off the worst January in U.S. history for mass shootings with 87 people killed across the country within a month, according to the Gun Violence archive. “Mass” is at least four people shot.
Monday night’s shooting at Michigan State University will change these numbers, although statistics don’t nearly show the scope of the horror. The terror of texts telling students, staff and faculty to shelter in place and to “run, hide, fight” leaves scars on all survivors, their families, MSU graduates, our many and varied connections to East Lansing and our state’s first and largest university.
We will learn more today. The names of the dead and critically injured. More about the gunman with prior weapons charges who killed himself when confronted by police. But what will we learn, really?
Will we learn a motive that explains anything? Will we learn how the school’s protective infrastructure failed, wasn’t “hard” enough?
We learned of the terrifying news at the same time locally that our Traverse City Area Public Schools reported a grant that will fund one school resource officer, instead of the five that were requested by the district.
Unfortunately, we’re also learning that most of the techniques we are using to harden our schools’ security with metal detectors, lockdown drills, and guards, armed or unarmed, have not been proven to prevent mass shootings, according to experts.
We’re learning that solving this problem is deeper, and more complex. The number of — and access to — weapons, radicalizing online communities, mental illness, hatred, self-loathing, disconnect are much harder to solve.
And we’ve learned, time and time again, that grief, outrage and fear makes an all too easy dig in on all-or-nothing policies that go nowhere.
So let’s learn to move past that part. To progress past where we say it’s an anomaly, or distance ourselves. MSU needs us close, connected, working together.
What if we filled these moments of silence with acts of unflinching love for each other that supersedes politics? In dedication to finding a place to start, with the simple premise that gun advocates and detractors alike don’t want to repeat this scenario, time and time again.
We mourn with MSU.
Now is the time to find the words of love and caring — and the will to do more than just say them.
Source: Traverse City Record-Eagle