Recognizing We Have a Problem

By now I assume most readers have heard of the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Just after 9:30am today an adult gunman opened fire throughout the school. As of this writing, 27 are reported dead, 18 of them children.

The incident has clogged all of my social feeds, with people, myself included, offering condolences, prayers, opinions, ruminations and the like. Beneath all of it, though, is a sort of backlash against those who bring up politics. Either it’s too soon or too opportunistic or too ghoulish to talk about such things at this juncture.1

Fuck that.

Wake up.

Americans are being slaughtered. Coast to coast. Regardless of age, race, religion. At schools, movie theaters, houses of worship and on city streets. We have, to put it mildly, a big problem.

So let’s figure it out.

The most important thing for us to do today, as a nation, is to recognize that we have a problem, that there have been a string of senseless murders that have made 2012 a depressingly bloody year. And recognizing that we can and must do something to prevent them.

That’s not being political. That’s being an adult.


  1. I’m not going to link any specific tweets or posts. I’ll bet I don’t need to; most peoples’ social circles probably run a similar gamut of what I’m seeing. ↩︎