LITTLE ROCK — TURN the dial this way and that, and it’s all the same-the same separate but equal banalities you hear after every one of these dreadful things, this time even before all the dead in Aurora, Colo., have been given a decent burial:
(Click). . . . which is why the United States should have more gun control laws. Lookit, lookit, lookit. May I continue please? I didn’t interrupt you. Now then. This man could not have pulled off a mass killing in a movie theater without all those guns. And guns are pouring over the border into Mexico, endangering their citizens and our own. And some people will defend their so-called right to own guns no matter how many people are killed. If there’s ever going to be any real progress . . . .
(Click). . . . fail to realize that guns don’t kill people, former neuroscience graduate students in Colorado kill people. The terrorist that blew up Oklahoma City didn’t use guns, he used fertilizer. Jack the Ripper used a knife. Let’s face it: A serial killer is going to be a serial killer no matter . . . .
(Click). . . . if you look at the commas the Founders used when they wrote the Second Amendment . . . .
(Click). . . . a more godly nation. A congressman from Texas, and you knew it had to be Texas, or maybe Louisiana, says the shooting could be directly linked to attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs. You know, when a nation won’t allow its valedictorians at its public schools to pray during their commence-
(Click). . . . time to have this argument again. It’s past time. I remember the ’80s, when this debate was raging. But it seems that my side just gave up on gun control. Even those politicians running as Democrats these days have to get the almighty NRA’s backing.Do you remember John Kerry going hunting during the 2004 campaign? Michael Dukakis would have never stooped to that. The Democratic Party is going to have to come to grips with the problems of guns in this country, once again, you know, get back to its roots, because it’s obvious the Republicans won’t . . . .
(Click). . . . for the film industry . . . .
(Click). . . . if every one of us had a gun. If somebody else in that theater would’ve had a handgun, and the training to use it, then this guy would have been taken out and . . . .
(Click). . . . the debate the National Rifle Association doesn’t want to have . . . .
(Click). . . . how many more of these shootings have to occur, how many more deaths do we have to exploit, before we can either get these people to adopt a sensible attitude on this question? That music you hear in the background is “Dirty Laundry” by Don Henley. We’ll be back after these messages. . . .
(Click). . . . the solution here is to redouble our efforts to expand mental health programs on campus and throughout our sick society, because we are all responsible for these crimes and . . . .
(Click). . . . the trouble with you wishy washy, bleeding-heart liberals is that you don’t understand the need for law and order, the way things were done in the Old West, or in the Hanging Judge’s courtroom in Fort Smith. Instead you get all hung up on technicalities and in the meantime these nuts are running allover the country shooting people down and when they do come to trial if they ever do, we give ’em all lawyers and abolish the death penalty. What would John Wayne do, I ask you. What this country needs is a return to good old vigilante justice but, no, instead it takes years to put ’em away and we never do just string ’em up the way they used to, and save the taxpayers . . . .
(Click). . . . sick and tired of you bible-beating red-state neanderthals who can only think of one answer to violence and that’s more violence, which only encourages more violence. It all starts when you beat your children and teach them that . . . .
THE COUNTRY’S president and his likely opponent this November both understood what they needed to say about the carnage in that movie theater out in Colorado last week: very little. They didn’t need to say more and they didn’t.
Barack Obama and Mitt Romney both expressed their sympathies and cancelled any further campaign events last Friday-and took their political ads off the air in Colorado. At least for one blessed day. These are times when silence speaks loudest and best.
To everything there is a season. A time to speak, and a time not to speak. It should be clear which time this is.
After all such events, whether at Fort Hood or Killeen, Texas, or Aurora, Colorado, or Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Ark., a surfeit of psychological theories and politically convenient explanations immediately appears, like a cloud of Job’s Comforters descending on the innocent mourners. As if there were some better explanation of what had happened than that man is a fallen creature, and some of us fall even lower than the rest of us sinners.
The airwaves and blogs now overflow with wordy static, but at such times not theories but help and comfort and, perhaps most of all, our silent presence is the best and in the end only assurance that the rest of us can offer. The way Southerners know to appear at a house of mourning with a plate of food-nourishment for the soul as well as the body. Once again the whole nation is a house of mourning and all of us should be comforters, not accusers.
Let us all hold on to this: There are still good people, kind people, dutiful and competent people who appear when needed, who make not just a profession but a calling of doing so. Let us add to their number. By our words and actions. And perhaps most of all by our quiet presence, and silent assurance that we are here. People are hurting-our people, however far away they may be.
The families that have been rent, the friends who in their shock still have not absorbed the extent of what they have lost, the survivors who are still struggling for their lives, the people of Aurora, Colorado, all need to know: You are not alone. And the rest of us need to let them know.
Yes, there are still good people in the world-police officers, ambulance crews, doctors and nurses and just bystanders who rush to do what they can, the healers of all professions and persuasions. Let us all recognize them, and back them up every way we can.
At such times, when it is hardest, and when it is best, let us keep the faith-and the good word:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
And hold fast to them.
Editorial, Pages 12 on 07/24/2012