Daniel Barden. Seven. Dylan Hockley. Six. Ana Marquez-Greene. Six.

December 14, 2015 8:51 PM

After Newtown shooting, mourning parents enter into the lonely quiet. It hardly mattered that what Mark and his wife, Jackie, really wanted was to ignore Mother’s Day altogether, to stay in their pajamas with their two surviving children, turn off their phones and reward themselves for making it through another day with a glass of Irish whiskey neat. “Our purpose now is to force people to remember,” Mark said, so down he went into his office to sift through 1,700 photos of the family they had been. (SLWaPo)
posted by fedward (3 comments total)

Wow, that was hard to read. It's difficult to imagine how people could be insufficiently horrified by what happened at Sandy Hook that they don't want to make a serious effort at preventing anything like that from happening again.
posted by misfish at 9:36 PM on December 14, 2015

> They had taken advice from a public relations firm, learning to say “magazine limits” and not “magazine bans,” to say “gun responsibility” and never “gun control.”

Prevent it? It can't even be discussed in honest terms.
If this horror wasn't enough catalyst for change I don't think anything will be.
posted by anti social order at 9:52 PM on December 14, 2015

For many gun owners I can imagine the thought of being unarmed in a society full of illegally armed "criminals" is a more immediate and personal horror than the enormous fractured peace and loss of life throughout this country on a daily basis. When someone is afraid, they seek safety and reassurance. One of the most overtly powerful objects a person can hold is a firearm, at least by every American pop culture narrative since pop culture's conception. The firearm's prevalence within the American psyche is neither surprising nor obtuse; a firearm is simple what someone who is influential holds, wields, points, has.

If someone clung more tightly to their weapon in a time of unrest, I can imagine they would be reassured. If someone distrusted authority and doubted the efficacy of systems assigned to their safety, I can imagine a compounded resistance would flare up at the scent of any efforts to curb the ease and simplicity with which they reach for and take hold of their firearms.

But if someone also belonged to the specific class of people to which social authority has been effectively designed to serve, and if furthermore in light of new legislation they possessed both the financial and cultural capital to adapt to any new access or usage restrictions towards the reinforcement their own well being, and if to the cries of help trembling from the very soil of the land they call home their response was a fervent, sweaty mantra of "leave me alone or I will regard you hostile," then I cannot know them.

They flaunt the rationality of a caged predator; their practiced cruelty must color their sight of the world, and whatever they see I must assume is right because they get their way, and their safety, and their families, and their righteousness while the victims of their selfishness are blown like chaff from the face of the earth. Of course life is cruel, of course. They know what is real.

I believe people can comprehend the terror their belief system welcomes into the world and I believe they consider the terror just another reason to arm, arm, arm and prepare. God is just, surely, and the right ones will die.
posted by an animate objects at 10:13 PM on December 14, 2015