Like the rest of the American public, I watched in horror as news of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting broke on the morning of Dec. 14. Within hours, it seemed as if every major media outlet was reporting on the tragedy. Cable news channels provided coverage around the clock, newspapers posted constant updates on their online editions, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter became living eulogies for the victims.
In the end, 20 children and six adults were dead. But, as ashamed as I am to admit it, after a few days of near-constant exposure to the sensationalized tragedy, I started tuning it out. I found all of the funeral reports, mentions of “tiny caskets” and interviews with the children not only nauseating, but completely unnecessary. They focused on the questions of “Who?” and “What?” but refused to fully address the controversial questions of “Why?” and “How?”
To make things worse, the boisterous calls for increased gun control from politicians of every political persuasion rang hollow to my ears. Gun reform was the hot topic of the moment — a soapbox upon which politicians could stand, please their constituencies and quietly dismount as soon as the public’s attention turned elsewhere.
We saw the same thing happen after the Colorado movie theater shooting this summer, when 12 people died and 58 were injured. The American public obsessed over the tragedy and demanded change and reform. Then they let it all fade away.
As I write this column, reports of the shooting at Lone Star College are headlines. Although the number of casualties at the Houston campus is nowhere near that of the Colorado or Sandy Hook tragedies, we need to use the culmination of these events as a wake-up call.
In the wake of so many high-profile tragedies, we can no longer allow denial to be a viable policy.
I come from a family of responsible, law-abiding gun owners, and I believe in our Second Amendment right to bear arms. But as the Colorado, Sandy Hook and now Lone Star College cases clearly demonstrate, our current system is woefully inadequate when it comes to keeping guns out of the wrong hands.
Instead of recognizing the tragedies as the wake-up calls they are, many gun advocacy groups are using fear-mongering tactics to portray reform as a call to repeal the Second Amendment, avoiding the question of reform altogether. While I will be the first to admit that I am no expert on gun control and I am in no position to propose solutions, I refuse to take the easy way out and act as if nothing is wrong.
We all know that the first and, often, hardest step is to admit that there is a problem in the first place. This year, two men were able to obtain high-powered, semi-automatic weapons and commit the worst mass murders in recent memory.
It is time we revisit the questions of “Why?” and “How?” and stop living in denial.
Lexi Thoman is a senior international studies and Spanish double-major from St. Louis, Mo.
