ROSEBURG, Ore. — She approached her daughter just as the doctors and psychologists had suggested: calmly, deliberately, stepping on the carpet so the floorboards didn’t squeak, picking her way around the wheelchair, the walker, the sagging balloons and wilted flowers. She held her arms out in front where her daughter could see them. She announced her arrival so as not to surprise her. “It’s just me, your mom,” she said, and then she reached out to place a reassuring hand on her daughter’s back, making sure to touch below the bullet wound and away from the incision.
It’s easy for discussions and debates surrounding the place of guns in our society to devolve into a battle of competing abstract concepts- the true meaning of the 2nd Amendment, gun rights, open carry in public spaces. Each of these ideas revolves around perceptions of right vs. wrong, rights vs. responsibilities, or rights vs. government tyranny. What gets lost in the war of words and angry recrimination is that when bullets begin flying, it’s not ideas or abstract concepts that suffer- it’s people. It’s easy to ignore the pain and suffering inflicted by gun violence if you’re not among the ones burying or caring for loved ones. When the bloodshed and suffering aren’t on your doorstep or under your roof, it’s easy to ignore the real world torment and misery caused by gun violence. It’s why I continue to believe that until a prominent Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foe © is forced to bury a loved one taken by gun violence nothing will change. When they’re forced to face the pain and suffering gun violence inflicts on so many Americans, perhaps then change will be possible. As much as I hate to think in those terms, it seems the only way common sense gun control will have a chance of seeing the light of day.
Seldom do we learn anything about what life is like after a mass shooting for those victims fortunate enough to survive. In the case of 16-year-old Cheyeanne Fitzgerald, she endured the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, OR…only to be faced with a physical and emotional recovery neither she nor her mother had anticipated, much less planned for.
Rather than engage in yet another diatribe directed at Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © who seem to oppose any attempt to reduce the likelihood of mass shootings like UCC, I’d ask a few very simple questions: Are you REALLY OK with this sort of suffering? Is what Ms. Fitzgerald faces on a daily basis what you consider to be the price of your freedom? Are you really so self-absorbed and self-interested that you have no problem with sanctioning the suffering of others in order that your self-ascribed “gun rights” continue to supersede any and all other considerations?
