guns, kids, and frustration

I think that what scares me the most about Friday's school shooting is how little it affects me at this point. Another day, another school shooting. Another flood of well-intentioned thoughts and prayers. Another debate about what to do about guns. Another argument about whether we should change the world or let the world change us. Another march, another week of stories about funerals to prepare. Another argument between politicians on both sides about what needs to be done.

And then the world will go quiet about it.

And then it will happen again.

And we will scratch our heads, and we will mourn for the lives lost, and we will wonder what we each could have done to prevent something like that. And we will wonder why those kids? Why that town? Why did no one see it coming? Why did that kid have access to a gun?

And we'll throw around the blame. Someone was mean to that kid. Someone bullied him to the point of no return. He was mentally ill - how did his parents not know? How did his teachers not know? Did he play violent video games and listen to violent music? That must have been it, right? It must have been the video games, the angry screaming music, the bullying. It must have been whoever sold that gun to his parents.

We act as though acts of violence never happened before violent video games, before the internet, before some singer screamed some angry words. We forget that Hitler killed six million people and I doubt he ever played Mortal Kombat (you know - since it wouldn't be invented until decades after his demise). We act as though the Crusades never happened. We act as though a Pharoah didn't order the deaths of every male baby in his kingdom. We act as though white men didn't come to the now-United-States and slaughter innocent natives - all before video games, before angry music, before you could grab a gun at Walmart while you were picking up your eggs and milk. Stop blaming the current state of the world for this nonsense. It's been happening forever, just to varying degrees.

The world has been at war since the beginning of time, and we act as though we are surprised by acts of violence. Adults, who should be role models for these kids, are out fighting over oil, over land, over who had the right to a damn parking spot in a mall parking lot. People are getting shot over asinine bullshit out there in the real world, and you expect our kids to be better? You expect children, whose brains aren't fully developed to know better than you? To know better than the adults that are supposed to be teaching them right from wrong?

These shootings are a tragedy. Don't get me wrong - it is devastating that it keeps happening, that we can't get our heads out of our asses long enough to come together to try to make the world a better place for our next generation... that we use the loss of these babies to further our own political agenda (your political agenda is bullshit when a parent is burying their child). 

I don't have the solution. I don't know anything about anything.

I just know that babies are dying, at the hands of kids who don't know better, who aren't taught better, who may have something mentally wrong with them, or may just be asshole kids. And we can't figure it out for them. How many more will it take for us to finally figure it out? Stop fighting, and stand up and do something about it. Surely someone out there has an answer, if we'd just open up our minds and listen.