When No Answer is the Answer

Three days after the Las Vegas shooting, a father was interviewed on NPR because his daughter had been at the targeted concert.  His daughter was wounded, but I suspect his interview was broadcast because his description of what he experienced, through the texts he shared with his daughter during the shooting and his frantic journey after, was sensitive and articulate.  In it he voluntarily added, without a question from the reporter, that he was a believer in the “second amendment”, owned guns himself, and saw nothing in his experience to challenge those beliefs.  He said wasn’t mad at the shooter, he blamed a “godless society”.

There is currently a national law enforcement and news frenzy over why Stephen Paddock did what he did. To date they have no answer. At this point, after thousands of man hours devoted to this search without conclusion it should be obvious that any possible answer that might be uncovered will be weak or inconclusive at best. Yet the search remains under full steam without the least consideration as to what will be gained by the public or the victims.

The twisted mystery of Stephen Paddock’s mind may have been his intention all along, to do something of horrific magnitude just to leave the world with a confusion forever attached to his name.  It’s as good a reason as any and equally as useless to those he wanted to devastate. However if that reason is correct, perhaps the actions of Paddock will have a greater effect than even the more shocking murder of twenty 6 and 7 year olds, which couldn’t make a blip on the Nation’s EKG.

The issue is not and never has been security, and it’s clearly not criminality either. The problem is social. As a nation unique in the world we simply have a tolerance for violence perpetrated through the use of firearms. Despite the increasingly common gross demonstrations of this violence, we take no serious steps to address that social condition, which is manifest every day, not just with random displays of carnage.

 I believe most every leader this Country has produced has mouthed the words “..so this will never happen again” as if gun violence was a spigot you could turn off with the right idea. It is a black hole of leadership.

We are more like an overweight individual who constantly snacks then is suddenly shocked that after some huge binge he has gained so much weight. That’s right my NRA friends, the problem is not the food…it’s the eater, but the answer to his obesity is not to keep nibbling.

The reason for gun control laws and regulations is not make you safe. Current estimates of guns in America are at 300 million.  Passing laws or restrictions will not make the guns go away. What such efforts would accomplish would begin a social recognition that solving individual problems, anxieties, angers, or no good reason at all (especially for the deranged) is not acceptably accomplished through the use of a gun, even if one is available.

Laws are primarily society’s attempt to externalize ethics.  Just because a law is passed doesn’t immediately change attitude.  The great example of that is this Nation’s long journey to eliminate or at least minimize racism, a journey as yet incomplete. 

Gun control laws are in desperate need of enacting, not to stop a Las Vegas shooting, but for society as whole to take the stand that this is not who we are.  Not to affect this generation, but perhaps for the next or the one after that.  That our Nation’s leaders, Conservative Republicans in particular, do not have the courage to face constituents who have been marinated in fear that their guns are going to be taken away and thus left defenseless is the real tragedy that is occurring year after year.

As a result the use of guns continues to be an acceptable outlet for solving personal problems, and for the lunatic fringe that outlet might look like the compiling unnoticed an arsenal of weapons in a large, popular hotel for the purpose of…who knows…what does it matter?

The father, whose daughter was shot as he watched the events on TV and flew to be with her, then felt it important to express to a National audience that he was “still a Second Amendment person” is the issue encapsulated.  That, with his daughter lying with a bullet in her, he needed to express that unsolicited opinion at all is the problem we face.

He blamed it on a “godless society”. How could someone so wrong, be so right? Call it a godless society if you like, but the fear he retains that his life would be so severely compromised if his unfettered access to guns was modified is the godless part.  The society part is the daughter left lying in a Las Vegas hospital bed.