Sandy Hook: What Can I Do?

What can you do about Sandy Hook?  That depends. Do you want to do something easy?...or something hard?

I keep hearing “We have to do something about the guns!”  I get it.  Nobody thinks giving guns to kids is a good thing.  Waiting periods for guns?  Fine.  A police check?  Fine.  Stricter laws against people who legally obtain the guns and put them in a position to be used by kids?  Great. 

You know what?  These are all lazy responses.  "You ‘lawmakers’ get out there and fix this for us."  We expect someone else to do the work.  We’ll just make the suggestions.  We must have been promoted to ‘management’ all of the sudden.  We have to stop expecting someone else to solve our issues.

You asked, “What can I do?”  Meaning YOU.  What can YOU do?

I keep asking myself the same question, over and over, “If guns have been around forever, and kids with issues have been around forever…why are kids killing other kids with guns?  And why primarily boys?”

Think about this.  When the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma was blown up by Timothy McVeigh in 1995, 168 people died, including 19 children.  The bomb used was made with ingredients that can be obtained on the open market.  No one banned the ingredients.  You know what was looked at with scrutiny?  The internet.  Because that’s where you could find the recipe book, the training manual, on how to build the bombs.  They went after the training manuals.

We celebrate movies and television that have shootings and murders.  Shows about cops, shows about the dead, shows about how to identify the killer of the dead.  But that has been around forever too.  So what’s different?

Here’s something to consider.  What are the top ten selling video games as we speak?  I pulled up Amazon to check.  In order, Call of Duty: Black Ops (Killing Game), Assassin’s Creed III (Killing Game, in case the word ‘assassin’ eluded you), Farcry 3 (Killing Game), Need for Speed: Most Wanted (Racing game where you get chased by cops as they shoot at you…apparently the driving wasn’t exciting enough), The Walking Dead (Killing Game where you kill people who are already dead…because killing the living needed an upgrade), FIFA Soccer, NBA 2K13, Hitman Absolution (Killing Game), Playstation All-Stars Battle (Fighting for the little ones until they graduate to killing games).  Seeing a pattern here yet?

When I joined the Army in 1982, I had spent my childhood playing cowboys and Indians…my favorite childhood toy was my GI Joe.  But you know what?  They had to train me how to use an M-16.  They also had to train me on tactical movement.  One of the things they can’t train you on is what it looks like when you look down the barrel and squeeze the trigger.  For that, in 1982, you needed experience or a very expensive simulator.  We had to have something called a ‘kill house’ where you shot real targets, all painted for ‘good’ and ‘bad.’  The Sergeant screamed at you when you shot a good guy by mistake.  In real life, that was a real civilian.  But we had to learn it.  Not today.

Look at the list of games above.  Do you know what they are?  They are a combination of training manual and killing simulator.  They are played by children when their brains are developing and forming synapses that help them know right from wrong and real from fake.  Sit down and watch one.  See the tactics.  See the real weapons.  See how many shots each has and know when to change out your magazine.  See how to work in teams and ‘hit-squads.’  See the blood and bodies rip apart.  Sit down and watch one.

You want to do something about Sandy Hook? Do you want to do something for real?  Something that might be hard?  If you have young boys, go check out your video game cabinet.  Sit down with them and watch them play.  Is there a trained killer in your house?  Do you have the guts to tell your kid they can’t play those games?  Write to your government officials about these games and demand that they be vigilantly controlled or banned.  I know it’s hard.  It’s a very large industry.  Believe it or not, it’s larger than the gun industry.  But this is where they are learning it.  If you think I am crazy, go watch one.

Think about this.  If you handed your seventeen year old son a handgun, and he already knew (a) that it was a Glock 19, (b) that it took a 9mm bullet, (c) how many shots it held in the magazine, and (d) that he could do better with a different make of hand-gun...would you be concerned?

If we want to really begin doing something about things like Sandy Hook, we have to begin to do some serious soul searching as a society.  The answers aren’t easy and the answer to this is not to look to someone else to ‘make changes.’  The changes begin with us.  We need to start to make judgements again.  We need to take responsibility for our children and our world.  We have work to do.