Your unofficial CD thoughts and prayers-plus thread
It's happened again - another mass casualty shooting in the United States. According to the figure I just heard on a media outlet, today's was our country's 18th school shooting event of 2018.
In our culture, the appropriate - and only - action to take in response to mass casualty shootings is to offer thoughts and prayers. Members of Congress offer theirs. Presidents offer theirs. People across the country with the power, but not the will, to do something to intervene in our national fixation with guns and mass shootings, offer theirs, too.
So I invite you to use this thread to offer your thoughts and prayers for the victims - the dead, the wounded, the families and friends of the dead and wounded, and the Florida community that tonight struggles with the meaning and the consequences of this shooting.
And know that you may offer your thoughts and prayers without concern that they might lead to new laws, enhanced restrictions, or increased vigilance over our distribution and use of weaponry. In our system, thoughts and prayers allow NRA-owned lawmakers to have SOMETHING to say when media outlets ask for their reactions to the latest shooting. Thoughts and prayers never lead to fewer guns or fewer gun deaths, but that's never their purpose.
And if you're not already sold on the place of your thoughts and prayers in the chorus that accompanies our inaction, just remember that the next group of people to die in a mass shooting in this country - and there's ALWAYS another group - will die knowing that you will likely think and pray for them, too.
BONUS TIME: You may also use this thread to tell us that "it's too soon" to talk about gun laws, and that we shouldn't "politicize" the tragedy. Opponents of any substantive action against gun violence almost reflexively issue those two objections. Of course, as a result, we NEVER talk about guns and gun violence, and nothing EVER gets done, because often the purpose of such objections is to put sufficient time between tragedy and remedy that people forget the tragedy, which renders the remedy unnecessary (remember all the action we were going to take about "bump stocks" after Las Vegas?)
The reality is that mass shootings happen so often in our country, that it's almost always "too soon" to talk about doing anything. Just as Donald Trump's taxes are always under audit, and therefore will never be released, so is our nation always recovering from another shooting, meaning it will always be too soon to talk about taking action.
Thank God.
Comments
-
Once again, rather than be genuine, you politicize a tragedy.
-
And for the record, there may be actions to take, but taking guns away or putting tighter restrictions on them is not that action. Gun laws do not work.
-
@davidtaylorjr said:
Once again, rather than be genuine, you politicize a tragedy.I can't object to this post of yours, David, because in the "Bonus Time" section of my OP, I very plainly invited people to use this thread to accuse me of politicizing this tragedy.
Of course, I ALSO stand by the remainder of that invitation's paragraph, in which I offered a rationale for the "don't politicize" and "too soon to talk about it" complaints critics often offer. I wrote...
@Bill_Coley said:
"Of course, as a result (of those two responses), we NEVER talk about guns and gun violence, and nothing EVER gets done, because often the purpose of such objections is to put sufficient time between tragedy and remedy that people forget the tragedy, which renders the remedy unnecessary (remember all the action we were going to take about "bump stocks" after Las Vegas?)"I invite you to continue to object when people call for corrective action in the aftermath of school- and other mass shootings, David (that IS what you're objecting to when tell me I'm "politicizing" it) At some point - after some unknown number of hundreds or thousands or millions of Americans die at the hands of other Americans, the tide of voices "politicizing" the issue of gun violence will breach the levies of your side's objections, and we will do something that will save lives. And in that season, whenever it arrives, you will probably protest, but the people behind the voices of that rising tide will celebrate, as will the families of an unknown number of people who weren't killed.
-
I'm not objecting to corrective action, that is political spin for what you want. I object to unrealistic and unnecessary gun control.
-
In my opinion, in order to make efficient laws or take effective counteractions we need to ask ourselves:
Are, these tragedies isolated events or do they point to something larger going on in society or in culture? And, if so what is the thread that binds these events together or what is the reason for the continuation of these tragedies?
-
A woman in Michigan has crystallized the core irrelevance of the "thoughts and prayers" response to mass shooting events in a way members of Congress might just understand. See for yourself, here...
-
AMEN! I would take authentic prayers from a righteous fervent person any day over money. I am 100% confident and offer my testimony that God is faithful and prayer works...not only works but works abundantly in every area including money.
