I’m sure the headline for this blog alone will elicit some strong emotions. That’s OK. Keep reading.…
I’ve been watching all the recent conversations and sparring about gun control with dismay. It seems like, once again, all the players are determined to go off into their corners and refuse to engage in meaningful dialogue. I’d like to be wrong about that, but I fear that the further away we get from the most recent tragedy, the less likely we are to see positive movement. All the arguments I’ve read are the same ones I’ve seen before. It’s all or nothing for both sides, and nothing new in the dialogue. Not overly surprising, I suppose. You see, we’ve made a wrong turn somewhere. We’ve lost the ability to participate in an enlightened discussion designed to help move our society forward (and avoid horrific incidents like the one at Newtown). Debate and dialogue, the art of rhetoric, used to be respected terms — aspirational traits. No longer. Today, rhetoric is used to describe the talking heads we see on television or listen to on the radio — spin doctors who seek only to sell their point of view, and are only willing to listen to their own point of view. Our own government reflects this loss, as evidenced by the recent fiscal cliff debacle.
We need to regain the ability to communicate in this country. And until we do, we’re doomed to see more and more examples like Newtown. We need to actually enter into a dialogue about guns and gun regulation. I’ve been hesitant to even enter the gun debate at all for fear that any position I might take (as a centrist) would be attacked from friends and acquaintances on both sides of the issue. I have also been avoiding the temptation to address the fact that Newtown was as much about the way we deal with mental illness in this country as was about gun control. In that case (as in other cases), the two issues have been completely intertwined. Fixing one without addressing the other will ultimately fail when it comes to fixing the problem. There. I said it. Not just one, but two taboo topics that our society must choose to deal with and find a way of changing the current paradigm. Failing to do so will result in more tragedies and more sorrow.