When I heard about the Sandy Hook shooting, I was on lunch
break at work. I read it on facebook
from several people, and after I had the basic gist of what happened, that was
all I needed to know. I have not read or
watched or listened to one news story about it.
Don’t need to, don’t want to. I
have prayed for all the victims and their families, and even the shooter and
his family, but selfishly, I just don’t want to feel anything about this. It’s too sad, too unthinkable. I know this kind of awful violence happens
other places, and that children die here in the United States for senseless
reasons. (Believe me, I know something
about violence against children, and it’s awful.) So, I’ve done my best to avoid feeling
anything, but that hasn’t kept me from pondering and debating (with myself and
others) how to prevent this sort of thing from happening.
After a lot of thinking, I’ve come up with this idea that
the reasons people make decisions to lash out at groups of innocents in
horrific ways are varied and complex, and that solutions cannot be simple “either-ors.” There are three main schools of thought that
I have heard tossed around, and those are 1) An idea of “being the change you
want to see in the world”, 2) mental health care access and 3) what do we do
about all these guns. I am going to use
this space to break down my thoughts on each of these points. If you have thought-out responses or
disagreements with any of my points, I am very open to hearing your thoughts,
as long as they are voiced in a respectful and constructive way, since that is
how I am trying to frame my thoughts.
1. “Be The Change.” You hear a lot about how some of these people
who do these kinds of things were loners, picked on, abused by their
peers. BY NO MEANS do I think that this
legitimizes the action of taking the lives of innocents who don’t deserve one’s
aggression. However, I do believe that
our actions have ripples, and our kind actions are likely to have kind ripples
while our unkind actions are likely to have unkind ripples. Be nicer to your neighbor than they deserve,
even if they seem odd or unreceptive.
This is going to seem slightly off-topic, so bear with
me. We teach young women how to avoid
rape, even though if she gets raped, it is not her fault. (It’s not, and this point is not up for
debate with me, sorry.) The fault lies
purely on the rapist. However, we want
to arm the young woman with the tools to do the best that she can to keep
herself safe. Don’t walk in strange
places alone after dark. Walk with your
keys between your hands. Be alert and
assertive. Etc. By doing this, we are not putting the
responsibility on the potential victim for keeping herself safe (if some jerk
wants to rape her he will find a way), we are just empowering her to do the
best she can. I am using this as an
analogy for my point here. There are
many, many people who are bullied today, and the vast majority of them don’t
shoot innocent bystanders; their circumstances are different and they choose
different ways of coping with their pain than forcing it on others. But, there are a few who lash out. And if some extra kindness and compassion
could be the key to stopping an act of violence, even if you don’t feel the
person deserves your kindness or compassion, why wouldn’t you go there?
Or, why stop there.
Why wait to act until the problem is bad? Why not be proactive and look for ways to
positively influence the lives of at-risk youth? The sister of a great friend of mine wrote a
wonderful piece on this, and summarizing it would never do it justice, so I’m
going to link it here:
Those are my thoughts on what we can each do in our personal
lives to make things better. Next I am
going to write about a couple of systemic issues.
2. "Advice: 5c" This part of this blog focuses on access to mental health. There is one very important point I want everyone to keep in mind
though, ok? A person with a mental
illness is far, far, far more likely to be the victim of violence than the
perpetrator. I don’t speak about this
lightly or without education or experience on the subject.
However, sometimes when a person with a severe mental
illness does something violent, their mental illness plays a key role in the
violent act. (This is where my employer
comes in.) So when people speak about
better access to mental health care, here are some of the factors at play:
First of all, like I said, I haven’t really read any news
articles or watched the news on the Sandy Hook story. I’ve heard mental illness alluded to with
regards to the shooter, but I haven’t bothered to find anything. I’m not sure if he was diagnosed with a
mental illness, but I can tell you that some people do bad things without
mental illness being involved. So yes,
better access to mental health care is important for those who have a mental
illness, but it isn’t always the fix.
(If someone is diagnosed with a personality disorder, that is different
from a mental illness. Evidence does not
show that personality disorders respond particularly well to medication or talk
therapy, apart from a therapy called DBT for a subset of personality disorders known
as “Cluster B.”)
Secondly, in some cases, and with some illnesses, the
illness itself can make a person treatment-resistant. There are lots of reasons for this. One commonly cited example is that people
with bipolar disorder sometimes do not like to take medication, because in
their manic state they are more creative and, in ways, productive, and they do
not want that taken away. (This is
certainly not the case for ALL people with bipolar disorder, but it happens
this way for some people.) Others may
resist treatment to avoid stigma. (This
goes back to my first topic of focus…we need to treat people with kindness, and
confront bullying behavior. Reducing
stigma is everyone’s responsibility.)
Thirdly, who pays for the better mental health care
access? My dream is to someday have a
private counseling practice, and at that point, I do intend to take on some
clients pro bono. On the other hand, I
worked hard to put myself through graduate school, and I don’t think I should
have to resign myself to be stuck with low wages my entire life just because I
chose a helping profession. Mental
health professionals deserve a reasonable wage.
I don’t expect to be a millionaire, but I expect to be able to have a
family, and feed it too. I don’t mean to
lump a bunch of people into one cluster, but the argument that I’ve heard that “This
isn’t about gun control, it’s about better access to mental health care” tends
to come from people who are a bit more conservative. And that’s fine. But I will say that it also tends to be the
more conservative group who opposes publicly funded healthcare. Now, if you are big on the second amendment
AND you are opposed to government-funded social programs, I am wondering if you
have a solution for where the money comes from that I haven’t thought of yet. And I mean that as an honest statement: if you have ideas, by all means, speak
up. (And don’t just tell me, write to
your congress person.) (I would also
like to point out that I am just a social worker, and when fully licensed, will
only be able to do talk therapy. Meeting
with a prescriber and getting prescriptions filled is even more costly.)
Now, this is not all to say that I disagree that better
access to mental health care is a good idea.
I absolutely agree that it is a good idea, and that it may be helpful in
preventing some violent incidents. I
make all these arguments to point out that better access to mental health care,
all on its own, is insufficient as a prevention to horrific violence. (In fact, my whole point in writing this is
to highlight that a single-pronged approach, no matter WHAT it is, is insufficient
to prevent horrific violence.)
3. The controversial
topic, which everyone seems to have an opinion about. Gun control.
My gut reaction was this: a world where guns didn’t exist
and nobody had them or could get them would be way safer than a world where
every person had a gun, and that’s the world I’d rather work toward.
But let’s break it down.
At this point, we are not going to rid guns from our society. So we can either do what we can to ensure
that those who possess guns use them safely, or we can arm everyone so that everyone
can protect themselves.
I will say off the bat that I disagree that arming everyone
is a good idea. It creates this whole
culture of “don’t harm me because I can harm you.” To me, this is a culture of fear, and
alienation. My experience with people
tells me that, with most people, they pose the biggest threat to me when they
are scared and defensive. I don’t want
to live in a world where we are all walking around scared and defensive. It creates a whole slew of mental health
issues (depression and anxiety resulting from alienation and trauma), and it’s
MORE, not less, dangerous.
I will also say that I have zero problem with a responsible,
level headed person owning some hunting equipment. I don’t hunt, I don’t like guns and have zero
desire to ever own one, but I support healthy hobbies. And camping with some friends while enjoying
the great outdoors and also coming home with something to feed your family with
sounds like a mostly healthy hobby to me.
The question here is, how do we predict with a high level of certainty
that a person can responsibly own such a weapon? I also understand that the shooter in the
Sandy Hook shootings did not own a gun, and was denied the right to buy one,
but stole one from his mother, who was also his victim. What can be done about all this? To start off with, I think it needs to be at
least as difficult to buy and keep a gun and ammunition as it is to obtain a
car and driver’s license. Some may think
this is too restrictive, but I would also like to see anyone wishing to own a
gun have a psychological evaluation. I
am concerned about severe mental illness, but I am even more concerned about
signs of psychopathy and narcissism, as well as a tendency toward rage or
anger. I also think that if you purchase
a gun, it should be mandatory for you to purchase something secure to lock it
up in along with the gun, and have penalties associated for failure to
maintain/store correctly or for allowing someone else who is not approved to
have access to the gun.
As many love to say, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill
people.” Believe me, I am aware that
someone could also kill me with a knife, a rope, a candlestick (in the
billiards room! It was Colonel
Mustard!). So if that’s the case, if
there are more weapons available than guns, why don’t we give knives, ropes,
candlesticks to police officers so they can use these items as incentive to
maintain the peace? It’s because these
items don’t kill quite as quickly, cleanly, or reliably as a gun. A gun on its own sitting on a shelf kills
nobody (unless there is some sort of mechanical problem?), but a gun in the
hands of a person who has the capability to snap or the desire to harm others
is more dangerous than other weapons. It
can be used to harm someone from a distance, which protects the conscience of
its user and it doesn’t require much human force for it to be used properly (at
least not relative to stabbing, strangling, or clubbing someone).
I am also uneasy with the idea that having schoolteachers
trained to use guns and having them in their classrooms is a good idea. I think we start sliding down a slippery
slope there. All it would take is one
teacher snapping (or being a sociopath in the first place) and deciding to
shoot his or her own class, and we’d all be saying that we need to send our
kids to school with concealed weapons. I’ve
known and loved a lot of 6 year olds, and believe that they are innocent beings
full of light and wonder, but at certain tender young ages, we just don’t
understand the consequences of our actions or abstract concepts like death, so
I reject the idea that having them carry around weapons is a good idea.
What do I think of certain citizens being allowed to have
concealed weapons permits? The answer to
this is that I’m not sure. I’m told that
someone with this sort of permit aimed a gun at the shooter in a recent
Clackamas Town Center mall shooting, and that it was at this moment that the
shooter shot himself. I am glad that the
shooter was taken out of the position to kill others, but can’t say that I’m
happy to hear about the death of any single individual. I’m not saying that the individual with the
concealed weapon did the wrong thing—at all.
Just trying to wrap my head around this situation. My understanding of a concealed weapons
permit is that they are pretty difficult to obtain and there’s a lot to go
through. I also haven’t heard of a mass
shooting at the hands of the holder of one of these permits. I still don’t like the idea of a world where
we are all walking around with guns, and I still favor a “love thy neighbor”
approach to working toward safety, but in social work they tell us it is
important to work within our competency, and I have no real education on what’s
involved in getting a concealed weapons permit or why they are important, and
therefore I have nothing very valuable to bring to this part of the
conversation.
So what am I trying to say?
To tie this all back up together, I think that when a
person offers a potential prevention to mass murder/violence, we owe it to that
person to hear them out. They might
think of something we haven’t thought of, and we might even be able to add
pieces of their argument to our own ideas, making them stronger. I have heard a lot of people saying that this
issue is not about gun control. I don’t
have all the answers, and maybe that argument has something to add to the
conversation too, but I don’t think that the idea of gun control is something
that we can or should avoid discussing when we keep hearing about horrific acts
of violence where a gun was the weapon of choice. And while not everyone who is mentally ill is
violent, and not everyone who is violent is mentally ill, when those two things
intersect things get a little dicey, so I DEFINITELY support better access to
mental health care, and more research in properly caring for the mentally ill. (I would love it if more were prevented from
coming my way. It’s not that I don’t
like working with my patients, just that I would prefer they were never allowed
to get to the points that they did, so they could live freer, happier lives.)
Perhaps my most important point is that a kinder world is a
safer world, and it starts with you. Go
out of your way to be kind wherever you can.
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