Senseless Tragedy, Senseless Aftermath

As everyone not living off the grid already knows, a horrific tragedy took place last week in Aurora, a town outside of Denver in Colorado.  James Holmes reportedly entered the theater as a patron, then left through an emergency exit and propped the door open.  He went to his car, put on a full complement of body armor, and grabbed two Glock pistols, a 12 gauge shotgun, and an AR-15 rifle.  For the AR-15, Holmes had bought a drum magazine which not only allowed him to fire many more rounds without reloading, but also caused the weapon to jam, potentially saving countless lives.  An infant was shot and thankfully survived.  A six-year old girl was not so lucky as her pregnant mother had to learn later at the hospital while receiving treatment for her own bullet wounds (both the mother and unborn baby survived).

The President had some touching thoughts in his weekly address:

One thing that I appreciated about President Obama's address was the use of the work terrorize.  As the reports filtered in after the shooting, one snippet I heard confirmed that the mass murder wasn't a terrorist act.  What I think they were trying to indelicately convey was that the shooter wasn't a Muslim extremist, but make no mistake that James Holmes is most certainly a terrorist. But one article I stumbled across thanks to Ezra Klein guest hosting the Rachel Maddow Show comes from Max Read on Gawker.

There Is No Such Thing As Politicizing A Tragedy

We've all heard politicians say that the aftermath of something so horrific as the Aurora shootings is not the time to discuss politics.  We've seen people who call out for more gun control after incidents like this get accused of pouncing on a tragedy for political gain.  But as Max Read states in his article:

This is stupid. There is no such thing as "politicizing" tragedy. James Holmes did not materialize in a movie theater in Aurora this morning, free of any relationship to law and authority and the structures of power in this country; nor did he exit those relationships and structures by murdering 12 people and injuring several dozen more. Before he entered the theater, he purchased guns, whether legally or illegally, under a framework of laws and regulations governed and negotiated by politics; in the parking lot outside, he was arrested by a police force whose salaries, equipment, tactics and rights were shaped and determined by politics. Holmes' ability to seek, or to not seek, mental health care; the government's ability, or inability, to lock up persons deemed unstable — these are things decided and directed by politics. You cannot "politicize" a tragedy because the tragedy is already political. When you talk about the tragedy you're already talking about politics.

Point being, Holmes doesn't exist in a vacuum.  His plans and premeditations leading up to his disgusting act occurred within our system.  The aftermath will play out in that same system.  Max Read continues to say:

No one wants to be accused of using a tragedy for "political ends." But you don't really get to escape. The insistence that no one talk about politics is itself a political act. Politics is how we effect change in the systems and structures that govern our lives. To take the stance that tragedies are or should remain "apolitical" or "depoliticized" is to say, essentially, that everything is fine and nothing needs to be fixed; that such an act was random and unpreventable.

I honestly couldn't agree more.  I'm not saying that the only conclusion we can reach is a repeal of the second amendment, I'm only saying that we have to have a sincere debate.  As Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia said on the Ezra-Klein-hosted Maddow show:

 

Essentially, horrors such as 9/11 and the Aurora shooting wake us up to the fact that something needs to be done.  With 9/11, we attempted to accomplish that.  With mass shootings, we don't.

There are many ways to look at our current system regarding guns.  One way involves red necks stating that referring to the AR-15 as an assault rifle is a lefty agenda and they'll be damned if someone thinks they should be separated from their gun collections.  The other is a results-guided perspective.  I don't think anyone looks at the events in Aurora, or at a political rally in Arizona, or at an immigrant center in Binghamton, or Virginia Tech, or Columbine, or Fort Hood, or a California McDonalds, or an Oklahoma post office, or a Luby's restaurant in Texas, or a Long Island Railroad train and think "yeah, this well-oiled machine hums along just fine, thank you."  Conceding that you don't want mass killings to occur doesn't mean you are conceding your second amendment rights.  It's okay if someone questions your right to own an AR-15.

We say that the victims of these tragedies don't want the stink of politics surrounding them in the aftermath.  Truth be told, I'd bet most of the survivors of a mass shooting would welcome an honest debate about the issues directly involved in their loss.  They might even wonder why we didn't have the discussion earlier, and could that debate have prevented the loss of their loved ones.