I flew to Australia a few days after the Sandy Hook massacre. I vividly remember sitting on the uneven hardwood floor in my Chicago apartment when the news delivered the suckerpunch that drained the blood from my face and turned the deepest pit of my stomach. But my most profound memory of that week was reading the headlines on a news stand in Sydney. “In Guns they Trust”, emblazoned with stars and stripes, proclaiming the failure and shame of the American status quo. I was embarrassed to be an American, knowing the current global typecast was that of someone so violent and heartless as to stand by and watch as a maniac with an assault weapon unloaded his arsenal into the tiny bodies of kids at school. I was heart-broken for those families who lost their children, and horrified that the world was laughing at the prevailing American idea that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun. I still feel sick when I think about it.
I didn’t have children when the Sandy Hook massacre happened. Now, I have a son. He just turned two. He loves hugging kids on the playground and pretending that bites of his dinner are rocket ships. I can’t let myself open the mental box that holds those emotions; that fear, that soul-crushing anguish. I can’t even begin to empathize with what the surviving victims of gun violence actually experience. Thoughts and prayers, offered while politicians turn a hand behind their backs to accept NRA money, are nothing more than whispers in a hurricane. I live a lovely life. I have a career I am proud of, a family that I love, and we have worked hard and gotten far. We’ve been supported and encouraged, praised and accepted. We are privileged, and I know this. I do my best not to take it for granted. But even my life has intersected with gun violence. When I was 10, my best friend’s father was shot and killed by the police. I don’t claim to know all the details of the event, but I do remember the agony I felt, watching her mourn and change in the aftermath. Over 20 years have passed, yet I can still remember the cadence of her silent sobs as she read a poem she had written at his funeral. I tried to be a good friend, but I was young. She retreated into herself, emerging again as we finished high school and went our separate ways. I went off to college, and she moved into a different apartment in the same building she had grown up in. I think about her often, and I am sorry for letting her drift from my life. On Mother’s Day, the spring I was pregnant, I got the news that a colleague and friend of mine had been shot and killed. He was 23 years old, and it was a case of mistaken identity. Chicago’s streets are a notoriously cruel place. Deshawn was trying to make the world a better place. He had just graduated from college and was determined to build his engineering career that incorporated his passion for environmental restoration and conservation. He and his best friend were killed at a stoplight, and they never found the killer. When I really think about it, I wonder if they even tried. And here I am today, reading the news of two mass murders in the United States in less than 24 hours. I’m sitting at my desk, in the Technische Universitat of Berlin’s Institute for Ecology. The day is overcast, breezy, and I am mourning alone. I have not had one indication that any other of the dozens of people in this building even know what happened. Or rather, what happens. What continues to persist; this blood-riddled American abnormality. We have examples from around the world of what to do to prevent mass shootings. We have the social resources and infrastructure to rally around the cause of preventing murder at school, or church, or festival, or a Wal-Mart. What we don’t have is courageous leaders who are willing to take our lives and our childrens’ lives seriously while they’re getting paid by the gun lobby. Instead, we’re perpetuating an idea that individuals are responsible for their own safety, that we should buy bullet-proof backpacks for our school children, and that we should trust Joe Schmo on the street with a concealed carry permit to save us all. We the people must hold the rich and powerful to their task, and demand that they pass sensible gun legislation to protect us. Call your senators, call your representatives, tell your story. Our children are watching. The rest of the world is watching.
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Dr. Elsa AndersonCome play in my yard! Archives
January 2024
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