On School Shootings and Facebook
I want to write something about the mass shooting in Connecticut. I feel like I should. But it hurts to go into a lot of detail. I hate it. Those poor families. Those poor children. Those poor teachers. That whole, devastated community. I cannot imagine what they are going through. I hate that people get sick enough that they would do such a thing. I hate that we live in a country where guns are so available, that we can have two shootings in one week. It was just Tuesday that I heard on the radio about a guy who shot up a mall outside of Portland, and I quickly sent texts to my father, my step-mom, my sisters, asking…everyone OK? Then on Friday, the absolute horror of what happened in CT. It’s so heartbreaking I don’t even know what to say.
I hate the talk that comes out of these things. People really can be assholes sometimes. How if only the teachers were armed, these things wouldn’t happen. How if only we still had prayer in schools, these things wouldn’t happen. How we should hire armed veterans to guard our schools. It’s all so damned crazy. I lost a Facebook friend over it, actually. She was an acquaintance from high school. We used to talk a lot before class in the 8th grade, because I had a boyfriend and she wanted to hear about that. After we broke up, she didn’t really want to talk to me anymore, which I guess was fine. So those of you who do Facebook know, you have different levels of friends there. There’s family, which I love, because my sisters and my dad post some really nice pictures, and it helps me keep in touch with them. There’s the good friends, the ones you see in real life whenever you can, and talk to via phone, email, text, whatever. There’s the long lost friends, those that you knew once long ago, and really do care about, but probably wouldn’t make a great effort to get to know them. The online friends, people you know through blogs and so on. Then there are the people like K, who you knew sort of long ago, and thought of one day when you saw their name on a common friend’s wall. And the more you see their posts, the more you realize you have nothing in common. I didn’t mind K talking about Romney and so on during the election. Some of my best friends voted for Romney. And I have friends that I know and care about who are very pro-gun rights, so that I can respect, especially since the subject is so very much in the news right now. But when she changed her profile picture to one of her shooting an M60, and it looks like flames coming out of the damn thing, and she’s laughing and having a great time. That struck me as the most insensitive and tone-deaf thing I had ever seen. At the same time she says she’s crying her eyes out about the kids who died in CT, she posts a picture like that. Because it’s her second amendment right to shoot a gun and enjoy it. Well, I don’t need an amendment to delete her from my list of friends. Bye bye, K. Enjoy your stupid life.
8 Comments
simon
Maybe not the reaction you were aiming for, but the last three sentences of this made me smile.
J
Simon, I’m glad I could give you a holiday smile. 🙂
Rain Trueax
I’m a gun owner with a concealed carry permit even but I’d also drop a ‘friend’ like that. Scary image and disgusting attitude anytime but even more at this moment. Most gun owners I know favor ending the right to buy semi-assault & assault rifles as well as extended magazines. You can own guns and not be a gun nut. There are a LOT of things this has all brought forward to consider. We should do guns first but not stop there as a nation as a lot more is involved in that tragedy and others like it.
J
Thanks Rain, so much of what we see is the nutjobs. It’s nice to hear a reasoned gun owner in the mix. I mean, I also own a gun, but it’s my great-grandfather’s shotgun, and I don’t think anyone has fired it since he died way back when. I don’t even have anything to put in it. Bullets or shot or whatever you’d say.
Nance
Wow. Tone-deaf is right. K. is the kind of person who most of us–the non-gun people–see as the face and membership of the NRA. She is who we are worried about. Yikes.
J
Nance, you’re exactly right. These are indeed the people I worry about. Not that K will go shoot up anyone, because I don’t think she will. But to be so unwilling to even consider the issue, to stick with the dogma above all reason, that is frightening.
Ally Bean
I’m finding that people on Twitter & IRL who were politically extreme [both sides] & vocal during the election are now completely silent re: Sandy Hook. Not a peep.
It scares & saddens me to know that these people are only willing to extend themselves on abstract poilitical principles– and not on something as concrete as taking steps to stop future mass murders. I just don’t get it.
J
Ally, that’s interesting. These people are not the least bit silent in what I’ve seen. But maybe your friends are a bit more restrained than mine? Or, hopefully, they’re taking a little bit of time to think about things, figure them out. We all need to stop and consider the situation, and whether our values support safety, and if they do not, are they really our values?