The minimizing euphemisms reflexively repeated by press and media include “injured” and “non-life threatening.”
“Maimed” and “life-altering” are much closer to reality.
Gunshot damage often leaves people permanently disabled and disfigured, with organs, bones, and joints shattered or destroyed.
The media hides these aftermaths, leaving us to fall back TV and movie scenes where the victim, with an arm in a sling, says, “Luckily it’s only a flesh wound.”
Your reflection about whether showing the blood and gore reality of these shootings would help brings the inevitable comparison with Emmett Till. It sure made a difference in that situation.
Thank you Terry for this thoughtful piece. I feel great sadness for the victims, their families, the community and our country. When will our love affair with guns end?
As I read this, I am sitting in shock as another mass shooting with an automatic weapon haas happened at Annunciation, our neighborhood Catholic school. I weep, as I imagine what our neighbors with children at this beloved school, must be experiencing on what began as a picturesque August day. When will this horror stop? Why do "guns" seem to have more rights than citizens?
Just yesterday, I spent four hours participating in a volunteer curt aberration program called WATCH. For 30 years this program has improved the judicial systems for victims, often of domestic violence. Well, yesterday, nearly every case, involved a firearm. The majority of the cases were assault. Clearly guns of any type must be cheep and easily accessible. Very few are aware of the long term mental trauma when a gun is used as a method of intimidation.
More guns are clearly not making us more safe, how to change that belief, I wish I had an answer. Thanks Terry for highlighting this important topic!
Well it's definitely time to start dealing with all anger that seems to accompany our us against them society. It does not help that little has been decided as to how to treat our neighbors suffering from mental illnesses. We are also lacking facilities, skilled care givers and funding. Everyone says get rid of the guns but I suspect those most wanting to cause harm will just find an alternative method.
People may be able to cause harm, but those alternatives are unlikely to be as destructive as the modern weapons available to consumers. It defies common sense that we allow so many people to own military style weapons in this country, while not having a significant system in place to assist people with mental health issues.
I actually understand the need for like military weapons to be available to the public, I just don't understand the people that actually buy them. I was also thinking there has been an increase in vehicles driving thru public events the last few years, guns just seem to be the current popular choice.
I feel deep grief. I also notice how understated and timid is our conversation around the armaments industry, and how we reuse to connect these incidents to the ecocidal, genocidal culture that makes enormous profits possible by mass marketing machines designed to kill humans at a speed, scope, and scale that can only be described as monstrous.
I remember former President George Bush talking about education once, and he asked this question:
“Is our children learning?”
My answer to that question remains the same to this day:
“Yes. Our children *is* learning.”
There are many children learning to love, and to step into the huge challenges of living in an increasingly violent world. There are children who are learning that we need to discern carefully how to provision ourselves for a planet that is increasingly violent, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.
VUCA is a military term describing our world that I came across while reading (yes, reading a book - something I learned to do in part thanks to school) Vanessa Machado de Oliviera’s “Outgrowing Modernity”.
VUCA is also an acronym for describing the world “we” are making as “we” have normalized the making and selling of so many weapons of war. Volatile. Uncertain. Complex. Ambiguous.
Republican President Dwight Eisenhower gave a speech formally entitled “A Chance for Peace” on April 16, 1953.
It was also called “The Cross of Iron” speech.
In it, he warns that as we focus so blindly on manufacturing weapons, we sacrifice investment in all that nurtures a way for life and peace.
Eisenhower actually stated:
“This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
I have been praying for all who have been shot, and for all who have been traumatized and harmed. I have been praying for the families and loved ones and neighborhoods and communities affected by today’s insane violence.
I pray that we will learn.
We humans are thrashing about with god-like technology that is designed for mass murder.
We do this at a massive scale and with massive weapons systems.
We do this at the local scale with technologies that even warriors fear to face in combat.
And we - our media and politicians generally insist now that the solution is more of these weapons, and also larger and more heavily militarized police combined with total surveillance.
Why?
Why is there no talk of removal of these demon-like weapons — designed only to kill and maim humans at maximum speed — from our lives?
My initial reaction upon hearing the news was: "Oh shit, Trump is going to send in the National Guard." My second response was sadness. My third response was - the gun problem in America is hopeless. It's just "thoughts and prayers," and the Second Amendment says I can have a weapon of war, you libtard. It is all so sickening.
The minimizing euphemisms reflexively repeated by press and media include “injured” and “non-life threatening.”
“Maimed” and “life-altering” are much closer to reality.
Gunshot damage often leaves people permanently disabled and disfigured, with organs, bones, and joints shattered or destroyed.
The media hides these aftermaths, leaving us to fall back TV and movie scenes where the victim, with an arm in a sling, says, “Luckily it’s only a flesh wound.”
There is an active shooter at Annunciation Church. Initial reports indicate at least 20 people have been shot.
Your reflection about whether showing the blood and gore reality of these shootings would help brings the inevitable comparison with Emmett Till. It sure made a difference in that situation.
Thank you Terry for this thoughtful piece. I feel great sadness for the victims, their families, the community and our country. When will our love affair with guns end?
The availability of guns is certainly one part of the equation. At some point we’re going to need to address the cultural aspect.
As I read this, I am sitting in shock as another mass shooting with an automatic weapon haas happened at Annunciation, our neighborhood Catholic school. I weep, as I imagine what our neighbors with children at this beloved school, must be experiencing on what began as a picturesque August day. When will this horror stop? Why do "guns" seem to have more rights than citizens?
Just yesterday, I spent four hours participating in a volunteer curt aberration program called WATCH. For 30 years this program has improved the judicial systems for victims, often of domestic violence. Well, yesterday, nearly every case, involved a firearm. The majority of the cases were assault. Clearly guns of any type must be cheep and easily accessible. Very few are aware of the long term mental trauma when a gun is used as a method of intimidation.
More guns are clearly not making us more safe, how to change that belief, I wish I had an answer. Thanks Terry for highlighting this important topic!
Thank you for sharing. I am watching the news and can hear the sirens out the window.
Well it's definitely time to start dealing with all anger that seems to accompany our us against them society. It does not help that little has been decided as to how to treat our neighbors suffering from mental illnesses. We are also lacking facilities, skilled care givers and funding. Everyone says get rid of the guns but I suspect those most wanting to cause harm will just find an alternative method.
People may be able to cause harm, but those alternatives are unlikely to be as destructive as the modern weapons available to consumers. It defies common sense that we allow so many people to own military style weapons in this country, while not having a significant system in place to assist people with mental health issues.
I actually understand the need for like military weapons to be available to the public, I just don't understand the people that actually buy them. I was also thinking there has been an increase in vehicles driving thru public events the last few years, guns just seem to be the current popular choice.
I feel deep grief. I also notice how understated and timid is our conversation around the armaments industry, and how we reuse to connect these incidents to the ecocidal, genocidal culture that makes enormous profits possible by mass marketing machines designed to kill humans at a speed, scope, and scale that can only be described as monstrous.
I remember former President George Bush talking about education once, and he asked this question:
“Is our children learning?”
My answer to that question remains the same to this day:
“Yes. Our children *is* learning.”
There are many children learning to love, and to step into the huge challenges of living in an increasingly violent world. There are children who are learning that we need to discern carefully how to provision ourselves for a planet that is increasingly violent, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.
VUCA is a military term describing our world that I came across while reading (yes, reading a book - something I learned to do in part thanks to school) Vanessa Machado de Oliviera’s “Outgrowing Modernity”.
VUCA is also an acronym for describing the world “we” are making as “we” have normalized the making and selling of so many weapons of war. Volatile. Uncertain. Complex. Ambiguous.
Republican President Dwight Eisenhower gave a speech formally entitled “A Chance for Peace” on April 16, 1953.
It was also called “The Cross of Iron” speech.
In it, he warns that as we focus so blindly on manufacturing weapons, we sacrifice investment in all that nurtures a way for life and peace.
Eisenhower actually stated:
“This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
I have been praying for all who have been shot, and for all who have been traumatized and harmed. I have been praying for the families and loved ones and neighborhoods and communities affected by today’s insane violence.
I pray that we will learn.
We humans are thrashing about with god-like technology that is designed for mass murder.
We do this at a massive scale and with massive weapons systems.
We do this at the local scale with technologies that even warriors fear to face in combat.
And we - our media and politicians generally insist now that the solution is more of these weapons, and also larger and more heavily militarized police combined with total surveillance.
Why?
Why is there no talk of removal of these demon-like weapons — designed only to kill and maim humans at maximum speed — from our lives?
What are we teaching our children today?
Are our children learning?
Are we learning?
My heart breaks.
Gary, thanks for sharing. It's difficult to process all that recent events mean about our culture and city.
My initial reaction upon hearing the news was: "Oh shit, Trump is going to send in the National Guard." My second response was sadness. My third response was - the gun problem in America is hopeless. It's just "thoughts and prayers," and the Second Amendment says I can have a weapon of war, you libtard. It is all so sickening.
Shortly after posting this, I learned of the Annunciation tragedy—devastating. It has been a sad week for our city.