Violence on a Sunday
NOVEMBER 8, 2017 BY DONNAMJ
Violence on a Sunday
It was Sunday. I got up and did my usual. Walking, meditation, calling my parents before they go to church, breakfast. I had a long night before and was ready for sitting on the couch watching a good movie. The TV was on mute like it is most of the time, but I could see that the news was on. I saw the word "Shooting" at the bottom of the screen. I assume it was more news about the shooting in Las Vegas. No, this was a different shooting. A new shooting that just happened in Texas. In a church during service. When it was all over we learn that 26 people were killed, 20 or more injured and the shooter had taken his life.
Throughout the day between my movies, I saw the talking heads on the news discussing the details of the shooting, asking why this is happening and what will be done about it. The same old discussions about changing laws and defending people's freedom to bear arms. I found myself continually shaking my head. Most of us are tired of this nonsense.
As a kid, gun violence was a part of my everyday life. People in the neighborhood were getting shot and killed for the simplest of things. From age 12 until 18, I remember losing friends and classmates to the gun violence in the streets and their homes. I lost a cousin to it. At 15, I looked into the casket of a person that resembled me and was only a few years older; gone by someone else's hands. Every summer, coming home from college, my brother and I would hear about a neighbor, a child, gone when they didn't have to be. Not enough people heard our cries or saw our tears. We learn to live with the nonsense. The violence.
In the past two years, we've seen lives taken in the street by police, by racist, by the scared and the entitled. Children getting gunned down, people praying and worshipping, losing their lives. Folks shopping and helping, ending up dead. We have to think twice about where we are going and if we are safe. We want to know, is this a mental issue, a gun issue. Is this an issue of violence? I think it is all of these and more. The violence is big and deeply rooted in the American fabric. This country was built on it so much so that it is in our constitution. From the beginning, we did not trust or love our fellow man enough. How different would America be if one of our amendments was "love each other daily." Out lack of love for our fellow human beings, our fellow American makes us not hear or try to understand the different sides and discussions on gun safety/control. Our greed as a capitalistic society supersedes and is more valued than the lives we lose from the excess of guns and violence. Our thoughts about mental diseases have made us mistreat the mentally ill in this country, and now we want to scapegoat them for violence that is way beyond that small portion of our society. Since I was 12 years old, guns have taken people that I have played with and laughed with. Taken them from this world and all I can say is things need to change. The laws need to change to minimize the violence, but our hearts need to change to irradicate it.