Only the hardest heart.
Where does it wait silently inside us, to be so easily, so instantly, unconsciously beckoned?
Who doesn’t feel it?
Only the hardest heart.
~
I think maybe it’s one of the essential parts of being human.
Not altruism. Not kindness. Not boundless curiosity. Not speech.
Grief? I’ve seen what looks like grief in other animals.
Maybe compassion, the need to try to fix what’s broken so no other human has to know grief’s depths.
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You won’t want to watch it.
We don’t want the reminder.
We don’t want to confront the reality that if it happened to their kids, it could happen to ours.
But we need to watch it. We need to remember. That seems the least we can do.
You can find the film at PBS.org, part of their Independent Lens series. It aired nationally Monday.
Or, you can watch it now, right here:
I cannot understand how our country can still allow private ownership of weapons specifically designed for war.
I live 25 minutes away from Columbine High School but even if we’d never lived through that, or then the horror of Virginia Tech, or…sadly, the list seems endless in our country.
Even if we’d never known any of those horrors, this alone should be enough to demand some reasonable change to our laws.
Are we so suspicious of our own government that we would rather deal with the slaughter of 6- and 7-year-old kids, inside their classrooms, than change our laws to ban private ownership of assault weapons?
Not deer rifles, not actual hunting rifles, but weapons whose original design was for war. (Just because a weapon can be used for hunting doesn’t mean that was its original purpose and it’s disingenuous to argue otherwise. I’m sure armed drones could be used for hunting deer, but that doesn’t mean every private citizen should own one, equipped with multiple hell-fire missiles.)
Do we really want our children to go to schools that look more like armed military camps than places of learning? Do we really want every teacher armed, every class to have its own AR-15 with loaded clips?
Is our resistance to any sort of logical gun control so strong that this seems like a good idea?
Why does any hunter require high capacity bullet clips? If you need 30 or more shots, pulling the trigger as fast as you can, you either need glasses or more target practice before heading out in deer season.
Why would Congress want any private citizen to have 30-bullet magazines?
The murderer at Sandy Hook fired 154 shots in less than 5 minutes.
Each of the little victims at Sandy Hook had between 3 and 11 bullet wounds. Each one!
Why in the world would President Trump sign an executive order making it easier for the mentally ill to buy guns?
What is wrong with us?
WHAT IS WRONG WITH US??
How many lives must be lost to our national paranoia?
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I don’t think you can watch the full film without tears; I couldn’t.
Who can see what these parents suffered — still suffer — and not feel grief, not ache with compassion and the need to do something that makes it harder for this to ever happen again?
Only the shooter, I think.
Only the hardest of hearts.