opinion

Becoming angry: A response to the Umpqua mass shooting

Since the massacre at Sandy Hook, we have seen 142 school shootings. That is almost one mass shooting every week since 20 innocent children and six adults (many of whom were trying to shield or protect students) lost their lives needlessly.

We have seen 294 mass shootings this year alone, 45 of which occurred at an elementary school, a middle school, a high school or a college campus. A mass shooting is an instance of violence where more than four individuals are killed or injured from gunfire.

The tragedy at Umpqua Community College is not unique. Such catastrophes barely even register with the public anymore — and it’s no wonder with the frequency at which they occur. And that is shameful. The fact that we have let such needless acts of violence become commonplace is disgraceful.

Arguments that concealed carry laws, or the pitiful legislation passing for gun control are to blame by keeping guns out of the hands of those who could bring down such shooters are ludicrous and unfounded. Studies show us that these killers do not target areas that ban guns. Most shootings (including Thursday’s at Umpqua Community College) occur in areas where concealed weapons are allowed. A student from Umpqua — a former veteran, with a license to carry and a firearm — told local reporters that he thought about trying to find the shooter, but was afraid that police officers would target him as a “bad guy."

These massacres are an affliction we have brought upon ourselves. James Alan Fox, a renowned criminologist, writes that “We treasure our personal freedoms in America, and unfortunately, occasional mass shootings, as horrific as they are, is one of the prices that we pay for the freedoms that we enjoy.” Is it really freedom we are paying for? Opponents to even the most modest of gun control reform love to cite the Second Amendment as a catch-all reform rebuttal. Claims that it is our “constitutional right to bear arms” may be true, but only partially so. It seems we’re always forgetting the rest of this amendment. The entire amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Planning to join a militia in the near future?

I am heartsick and exhausted by these preventable acts of violence. And yet, what right do I have to be saddened? I haven’t lost anyone — no parent, no spouse, no child. My grief is wider and shallower; my pain is less acute, more of a dull ache than a stabbing anguish. And it is this ache we all feel, if we have not become numb, that is stopping us from acting. The anesthetized sadness we are feeling is paralyzing us. We, who have lost no one, do not get to feel sadness. Detached melancholy has allowed 45 schools to be terrorized by gun violence, because we have become too phlegmatic to recognize that these acts of violence are preventable.

Thursday’s events have elicited many emotions from me, but sadness is no longer one of them. I am replacing my sadness with anger. Because the mourning I felt for each of the other 44 school shootings this year did nothing to prevent the next massacre. Our anguish has made us lazy, and that laziness makes us complicit. So I am choosing anger. Not needless anger, but instead a more focused rage. One which asks the questions we have been trained not to ask. My anger will focus on queries such as: Why does America have the highest number of mass shootings in the world? Why do American civilians own more than 300 million firearms when our collective law enforcement officers own only 4 million? Why are these mass shooters overwhelmingly white, heterosexual males?

Thursday, I felt tremendous sadness about the events at Umpqua Community College. I felt for the families of the victims, and bemoaned their pain. I felt for the family of the shooter, whose lives will be upended in the media, and will likely struggle to reconcile their idea of the young man they loved with the perpetrator of such horrific violence. I still feel these things, but I no longer feel sadness. Today I feel anger. What do you feel?

Erin E. Meek is an instructor of sociology at Des Moines Area Community College. Contact: https://dmacc.academia.edu/ErinMeek