A curious fascination?
I have mentioned
Tom Begnal's series of diaries,
Another day in the (gun crazy) U.S.A., before. They've been appearing on an almost daily basis since before xmas. I make a point to read them each day, not because it's pleasant -- I read them as a daily reminder of what we, what Democrats are fighting for.
For my part, I'm not quite sure why I started writing so often, what it was about Sandy Hook or the push to make progressive change in Congress or the NRA's unhinged counterattack that made me so fed up with the status quo. For most of my time here I struggled to find more than one item that seemed worth writing about in a week. It's strange, but I can think of worse things to dwell on than the plague of gun violence and trying to make things better in that regard.
Recently, however, I've seen it insinuated that folks like me must have OCD about guns or crime to keep harping on this issue. So I want to write today about classifying an interest in reducing violence, suffering and death, an interest in preserving life, as an unreasonable preoccupation.
Although I expect the usual game of whingeing semantic dodgeball, I will define the term as I'm using it.
Definition of OBSESSION
1
: a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling; broadly : compelling motivation
I know the rules about accusations of mental illness; frankly, that's not my point. I'm not interested in engaging in that kind of call-out, and anyone who really wants to know what I read yesterday is capable of finding it. It's just the idea that this notion is an obsession. Disturbing. Unreasonable. Synonymous with a fetish, mania, fixation. That there's something
wrong with me for caring about gun violence as much as I do. Beyond any rules question -- I think that's false, and against the ideals this forum means to encourage.
As a liberal, a Democrat, an atheist, as a human being; all of these qualities give me good reason to care. If liberalism has a focus on civil rights, what rights can the dead exercise? While the NRA and gun enthusiasts consider the 2nd Amendment their 'first freedom' and insist that no others can persist without it, I see life as necessary to have any freedom. Is that unreasonable? Life, liberty and property: I measure their worth in part by how society treats them, and how our justice system prioritizes them in taking them away from law-breakers.
And as a skeptic who sees no afterlife to look forward to, I see life as precious and finite, worth living, worth protecting because it is finite. And even if I did believe as many do, I don't find many of them who completely neglect or dismiss the value of this life. However unreasonable I might find the belief in some paradise afterlife, most of its adherents seem to have a healthy interest in this life.
I reject the notion that something must be wrong with me, that my interest in saving lives is some borderline crazy idea. Not just because there are rules here. But for good reasons. And based on my small potatoes advocacy -- a few diaries, a few phone calls, emails and tweets -- I can only imagine how daft the likes of Michael Bloomberg or Gabrielle Giffords must look, if I'm obsessed.
That said, I can understand why some would rather not witness this daily parade of horrors. It doesn't please me to find more, far from it. If this is what it takes to shake people out of their comfort zone enough to make change, though, I'll do it.
Earlier this morning,
shevas01 wrote about Jonylah Watkins, one of the latest casualties from gun violence. Take a moment if you will to read about a six-month-old baby, shot five times, now dead. I also read about it at
CBS News and at the
Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times has
video interviews with neighbors as well. And the story also gets a mention in
Tom Begnal's latest report.
I see no need to reiterate further what shevas01 has already done so well. I'm not nearly as interested in dwelling on the possible motivations, gang ties, angry Facebook postings...no, this is an unnecessary shift in focus. Getting angry about grown men and gang-banging may be easier. Don't dare dismiss this poor little girl, though, not here. Here, in this supposedly modern, civilized, first world country, some kids don't even get to enjoy a year before oblivion comes calling. Because of guns. Which is the disturbing preoccupation, which the unreasonable notion? The threat of some possible future tyranny or the clear and present danger of execution for the sake of someone else's unbridled freedom? Is our democracy so fragile, so untrustworthy, that we'll embrace this gun-toting anarchy instead?
I'm not going to write at length on the gun trafficking problem in this particular diary, either. It's been explained already -- after another little girl, Hadiya Pendleton, died in Chicago -- how
gun regulations in Chicago are thwarted by guns brought in from outside the city, or from neighboring states. And I already know about the
new bill in the Senate, sponsored by Democrats, passed out of committee
largely by Democrats, the one that's made any progress at all in the legislative deathtrap that is our Congress these days. We're obliged to fight
this hard to make gun trafficking or straw purchasing a federal crime.
There's nothing wrong with these Democrats, like me, who support taking action to reduce gun violence. What I see as wrong is the ongoing slaughter. I find something terribly wrong with a baby caught in the crossfire, dead after being shot five times. That is what I find profoundly disturbing. And on the matter of dismissing, minimizing, maligning concern for this -- there are no words.