I have no doubt that the people who assembled at Newtown High
School found comfort in President Obama’s
words on Sunday night.
But make no mistake (as Obama is so fond of saying). The
President didn’t only come to Newtown to pay his respects to those
who were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary last Friday morning.
He also came to lecture the nation and to save us from
ourselves:
This is our first task — caring for our children. It’s our
first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything
right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.
And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are
meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we’re doing
enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from
harm? Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together
there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to
love in return? Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to
give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to
live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?
I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re
honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing
enough. And we will have to change.
Since I’ve been President, this is the fourth time we have come
together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by a mass
shooting. The fourth time we’ve hugged survivors. The fourth time
we’ve consoled the families of victims. And in between, there have
been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country,
almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small
towns and big cities all across America — victims whose — much of
the time, their only fault was being in the wrong place at the
wrong time.
We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must
end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told
that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is
true. No single law — no set of laws can eliminate evil from
the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our
society.
But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do
better than this. If there is even one step we can take to
save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the
grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and
Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that
— then surely we have an obligation to try.
In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds
to engage my fellow citizens — from law enforcement to mental
health professionals to parents and educators — in an effort aimed
at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we
have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we
really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such
carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say
that such violence visited on our children year after year after
year is somehow the price of our freedom?
So President Obama says we aren’t doing enough and said not
once, but twice that we must change. But we must ask how Obama want
us to change. Sure he says that he will use his office to engage
stakeholders. He also pays lip service to the argument that new
laws won’t eliminate evil or senseless acts of violence. But
whenever Obama says that inaction isn’t an option you can be sure
he wants to do something regardless of whether it actually works or
not. Given that he has
asked his cabinet to come up with proposals to reduce gun
violence (including the possible reinstatement of the ban on
assault rifles), can there be any doubt how Obama wants this
country to change?
This isn’t to say change shouldn’t come. But it has to be the
right kind of change. President Obama can ban guns and assault
weapons all he wants. Obama can no more stop gun violence than he
can calm the oceans. As I have argued previously,
if strict gun control was all it took to stop gun violence, then
Chicago should be the safest city in the entire country.
Although the massacres in Tucson, Aurora, Oak Creek and now
Newtown were horrifying spectacles, many of the homicides we see
usually involve only one victim and are often over the most trivial
of matters. How often over the past quarter century have we heard
about children
murdered over their shoes? Just last October, a 12-year-old
girl in New Jersey was
murdered by two teenaged boys for her BMX bike. If President
Obama wants to engage the nation on gun violence then we must come
to terms with why so many young people (especially in the inner
cities) believe that life is so cheap that they are prepared to
take another life over material possessions.
Unless a concerted, day-to-day effort is made to change the
attitudes of young people concerning material possessions while
instilling the proper values in its place, then President Obama’s
efforts will amount to nothing more than a shot in the dark.
