Start talking about 'massacre prevention,' it's too late to talk about 'gun control'
Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2012 at 08:04 AM
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When the English got serious about colonizing Ireland the most enduring change they made was to rename our towns.
We had survived every successive wave of plundering invader, but when the Empire changed our place names they changed our reality. Words accomplished what swords could not.
We had survived every successive wave of plundering invader, but when the Empire changed our place names they changed our reality. Words accomplished what swords could not.
So it turns out there's quite a lot in a name.
I bring this up because I remember all the utterly empty rhetoric that I used to hear in the news in the darkest years of the Troubles. Each day brought a torrent of increasingly exhausted words: outrage, atrocity, condemnation, retaliation.
Your eyes started glazing over before they wheeled on the inevitable religious leader (of whichever denomination) to express his (it was always a man) views on the latest killing.
'I - condemn - this - outrage - and - atrocity - and - I - implore - there - be - no - retaliation…'
In the north too long a sacrifice had made the language numb. It prolonged our suffering by being unequal to it. It had diminished our capacity to get beyond things. Words had literally failed us.
When words fail you it's the best indication you have that you're standing at a crisis point. Feeling completely unequal to the task means you're staring at a job worth doing. Feeing unable to express it means that you absolutely must. These are lessons that all the decades of suffering in the north have taught me. I don't know much, but I know that anguish that is immense and unspeakable is the harbinger of extraordinary change.
When I read the news about the shootings in Connecticut on Friday I despaired, like most people do in the face of inexplicable horror. But perhaps unlike a lot of people in that state I have seen that kind of horror up close before.
A few years after the transformative ceasefire was announced and the peace process had begun in the north, I was on an Aer Lingus flight from New York to Ireland when the young woman seated next to me turned and said: 'Isn't it terrible about the bomb?'
My heart sank. I didn't know what she was talking about. It was Saturday August 15, 1998. She was talking about Omagh. Twenty-nine people died, including six teenagers and five children, and 220 people were injured. They were all just ordinary people out shopping and socializing.
A few hours later I learned that most of the youngest killed had come from my home town. Shaun McLaughlin, Oran Doherty and James Barker all died instantly when the bomb exploded, they were all just 12 years old. Fernando Blasco Baselga, a Spanish exchange student learning English in my town, was also killed. He was just 12 too. Rocio Abad Ramos was a Spanish exchange group leader, was only 24. By the time I actually reached Omagh that evening the traffic was still being diverted from the still smoking town center.
The Omagh bomb killed Protestants and Catholics, it killed nationalists and unionists, it killed a Mormon teenager, it killed adults and teenagers and children and it even killed an infant in its mother's womb.
It was an act of unspeakable savagery. It was also utterly pointless. It was an admission of the final collapse and failure of the so-called armed struggle. It was proof of the nihilism that had prolonged it. It was the last straw.
But the young woman on the plane beside me didn't think so, I recall. She nodded her head from side to side and said firmly: 'There will never be peace in Ireland.'
I told her, right to her face, she was quite wrong. There would be peace now because they had tried every other alternative. I knew that the time had come, I could feel the time had come, there it was staring me - and all of us - in the face.
Winston Churchill once said Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing after they have exhausted all other possibilities. The Irish were at the same point in the 1990s. It's human nature, I think, to ignore what has been staring you in the face for years. It's because of the heavy hand of history, it's because of the fear of getting it wrong, but if you wait long enough you'll discover you have no choice.
Throughout the 1990s the Irish public's reaction to the words 'peace process' became as emotive and complicated as many Americans reactions to the words 'gun control.' A significant percentage of the population would glaze over and stop listening the moment those words were uttered. What we discovered was that the language would have to change and evolve to bring all parties to the table.
They had talks about talks, they had proximity talks, finally they talked face to face. The thing was, after decades of stalemate, they were finally talking.
Entire government cabinets worked on drafting the right words. Words were the harbingers of change. Words matter.
So today I propose that we stop speaking of 'gun control' and we start talking about 'massacre prevention.' Because its an aim we can all support. Because the language matters. You have to change the language to change the reality.
Find the words to talk to your friends and neighbors about 'massacre prevention.' Don't speak of 'gun rights' or 'gun control' ever again. It's too late for that anyway. Don't let other people frame your debate for you. Frame your own debate. The only positive change you are likely to see now depends on the work you do to find and describe your horror about the shootings on Friday and your resolve to talk to your friends and neighbors about what needs to be done.
Ask questions worth asking: why must our Supreme Court decide who can marry who, but any lunatic with a pulse can buy a semi automatic? Ask: who does the NRA actually represent, gun manufacturers or gun owners? Ask: do you want to live in a nation where the people around you are armed to the teeth and at the ready at all times?
Ask questions and don't be deterred by the windy rhetoric that comes back at you. The Second Amendment says that guns should be 'well regulated.' So why does the NRA oppose mandatory background checks at gun shows? There are over 300 million guns in America, almost as many guns as people. After Friday there's no one in America who can ever argue that they are 'well regulated' again.
Finally, ask everyone you talk to what would you do if those children in Connecticut had been yours?
13 Comments
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irishmoonfrog | Dec 18, 2012, 07:55 PM EST
The first half of the article had me nodding in agreement...then it lapsed into a series of trite anti-gun platitudes. It sickens me to see how the anti-gun fanatics have jumped all over this as an opportunity to agitate for their narrow political agenda!
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iriishgirl | Dec 18, 2012, 09:46 AM EST
Well said. Massacre control is exactly what we need. Additional protection at schools is what we need. Additional gun control will not protect our childen- is a bit of a fallacy. I say this because guns are stolen everyday in the US, and passed right into to the hands of evil and/or mentally ill people everyday. The "bad guys" will always be able to get the guns, and some of us "good guys" need them too. To compare the US gun death tolls to other countries just doesnt work. Other countries just aren't like ours, we have have millions of mentally ill people, and millions of illegal guns already out there (sad to say). Home invasions are now becoming common and deathly, in even the safest of areas. As such, we need to protect ourselves and our families, and be it by having a gun, guard dog and alarm system - so be it - and that is the sad 360 of it all.
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Joe Glackin | Dec 17, 2012, 10:04 PM EST
Cathal I agree with your outlook and assessment on this massacre. Your comments on Omagh etc proves the day of militant Republicanism are over. Weve seen and experienced 30 years of war.All that have suffered in various ways from combatants,prisoners,civilians,etc realize this fact.
As you rightly say the situation is not gun control ,but protection of our families. Your comparison on GFA here and the States reaffirms this.
Its not the trigger but he who pulls it is responsible.
Go raibh maith agat chun an thuarascail go maith
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IrishAndProud | Dec 17, 2012, 09:05 PM EST
This killer wasn't a gun owner; he was a gun thief. He didn't use assault weapons -- so why are we talking about banning a weapon he didn't even use? To do so sounds like cheap opportunism in the sorrow of the moment, to go after something that had nothing to do with the crime. Can we please can the left-wing politics and just let the country grieve? I've personally known someone who was murdered with a gun; just shut up and let the country grieve.
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KatieMurphy | Dec 17, 2012, 04:31 AM EST
Let me add - perhaps we need to make everyone in the chain of supply who let a gun end up in the hands of a mass murderer be held responsible as a conspiritor before the fact...............It would be a lot less expensive then the horrors that happen. Lock them up, weld the bars shut. Re mental illness - what are we going to do - have over 300 million people checked out every year, probing hteir minds - there arendt enough shrinks to do the job if everone of them was here in America.
Eye for eye sounds in some form as appropirate
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KatieMurphy | Dec 17, 2012, 04:24 AM EST
Thank you - I was going to say brilliant but Hyndsey beat me to it...............
And lets remember that that the right to lifer called Bush Jr, who made a big fuss about Ms Schiavo, a brain dead woman - he was the guy who drove the end of the assualt weapon ban in 2006.
Proving once again that words are just cover up for vile crimes. BTW readers of IC - the southern baptists (bush is about equiv ) also have a concordant with the Catholic church.
Run by a the German pope whose mentality that UNexcommunicating a holocaust denier / revisionist named Bishop Williamson is ok.......Benedict also in his xmas message said that gay marriage threatens peace. ..........Is t his his way of going back to his CDF days and warning of the second holy inquisiiton.?
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llyndsey | Dec 17, 2012, 12:16 AM EST
Brilliant, thank you.
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cillowen | Dec 16, 2012, 11:40 PM EST
Here are the statistics; Murders with a firearm in one year: Great Britain, 14; Australia 59; Canada, 144: USA, 9,369 (Land of the Free - shapers of a world in their likeness) who knew?.
A nation that is mentally ill trying to convert others to adopt such a model.
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PiperMac52 | Dec 16, 2012, 07:05 PM EST
Ironically we have a second amendment as a result of the oppression of England directed at the original Colonies. We fought a revolution in order to gain independence which only succeeded because those colonists had arms. In those countries that have prohibited private firearm ownership the people are left defenseless and many are killed by those who do not follow the laws. FBI statistics show that in communities that have liberal right to carry laws crime rates are much lower. We also have numerous laws on the books on every level: Federal, state and local which regulate every aspect of firearm ownership and magazine size. Obviously criminals ignore these laws while law abiding citizens are at their mercy. Then there is "fast & Furious" where the Dept. Of Justice under Eric Holder encouraged gun dealers to sell weapons to Mexican drug cartels resulting in the death of Border Patrol agent Brian terry and numerous civilians. What a fine example. No one has been held responsible as of this writing.
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olovely | Dec 16, 2012, 12:31 PM EST
I hope now that the conservatives calling for better mental health care will be supporting those provisions in Obamacare.
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dianeejohnson | Dec 16, 2012, 12:21 PM EST
You have said it all, Mr. O'Doherty. Massacre control it is.
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rgray222 | Dec 16, 2012, 10:31 AM EST
There is no doubt that guns are a problem but the greater problem is recognizing and treating mental illness. Fixing the gun problem is a band-aid. Understanding, treating and possible curing the mental illness problem is the solution.
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