Finding Answers To Violence

Last week every effort to write a Sunday column about anything other than the murders of a classroom full of fourth-graders quickly became pointless.

I tried. It’s not a column I want to write, certainly. Since Tuesday’s slaughter of students at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, it’s been exceptionally difficult to devote much time thinking about other issues. That will fade with time, and that’s the heartbreaking truth of it.

The need for solutions won’t fade. Perhaps the best news coming out of last week was that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had dispatched Sen. John Cornyn of Texas for talks with Democrats on legislation to curb gun violence. Needless to say, plenty of people are skepticala but it’s better than no discussion at all.

From a societal perspective, a lot contributes to these tragic incidents. Our communities are woefully ill equipped to recognize and respond to mental illness, which can range from basic depression (which is not to say it’s simple) to deeper psychological difficulties, from schizophrenia to antisocial behaviors to a lack of empathy or remorse.

Does protecting children, which both political parties talk about, include establishing systems capable of recognizing and responding when children are adrift, when they are suffering from the bullying of others, when they feel a sense of worthlessness or anger that nobody understands them? What mental health services and training we have in schools hardly scratches the surface of need. And our world of social media and iPhones works in many ways to isolate people and in other ways to radicalize them toward violence.

What happened Tuesday and too many times before isn’t something so simple that a response can be one-dimensional. No, it’s not just about guns but it is about easy access to guns and hundreds of rounds of ammo, to be sure.

I want Republicans to support the Second Amendment. A lot of Arkansas Democrats support it too. But I do fault anyone who refuses to come to the table and pursue answers, which describe too many politicians more concerned about losing contributors than doing the job they were elected to do — solve the nation’s problems.

The NRA has disfigured the Second Amendment, making it seem its preservation demands that we accept every kind of weapon gun manufacturers and modern technology can produce. I don’t think that’s the case and I’m comfortable joining the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in that line of thought.

Scalia, archconservative as he was, acknowledged in the majority opinion of a major 2008 gun control case that a right to firearms is not unrestricted.

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” Scalia wrote. “[It is] not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Would stricter regulation end all violence with guns? No. But we’re not looking for perfection here, folks. Just improving our capacity to prevent or reduce carnage that stops the beating heart of a child.

A nation as strong as the United States — I do embrace the idea it’s an exceptional nation — should be able to navigate preserving a robust Second Amendment without having to occasionally sacrifice classrooms full of 10-yearolds in service to a mindless devotion to the amendment’s application.

No solution will be free of addressing mental health — the kind that prevents people from turning responsible gun ownership into destructive objectophilia (love or adoration of inanimate objects) and the kind that prevents people from believing murder is some kind of answer to their inner demons.

Lastly, I don’t know about thoughts but I remain convinced prayers help in every situation. Pray on. Our nation needs it.

“Would stricter regulation end all violence with guns? No. But we’re not looking for perfection here, folks. Just improving our capacity to prevent or reduce carnage that stops the beating heart of a child.”