It's funny, just before it happened, my mother-in-law was visiting and we were talking about the song Pumped Up Kicks. She made a comment to the boys about it being about a school shooting. When they asked what that was I quickly directed the conversation elsewhere and later explained to her that we never had a reason to have to explain "school shooting" to the kids and I was going to protect that innocence in them for as long as I could. Living in a bubble can sometimes have its benefits.
How I wish that bubble hadn't burst. Just a few short weeks later, with the tragic news from Connecticut everywhere, we had to tell them what happened before they heard about it on their own. Oh, how my heart breaks just thinking about that horrible day.
In the aftermath, I was struck by how big of a role Facebook played a part in that tragedy. Now, looking back, to be able to visually track the grief and shock of a national tragedy like that was fascinating. In the immediate hours, there was a lot of anger and emotional posts. And lots of finger pointing.
But eventually, the discourse changed to grief and support and compassion for those families that lost little lives that day. As it should.
It made me wonder, how would 9/11 have been different if we had Facebook back then? I am thankful for Facebook on so many levels, but this gave me another one. A single, public forum for free speech and discourse. We all have the ability to state an opinion and listen to others express theirs, and share thoughts back and forth, thus possibly impacting general public opinion. It's an amazing tool.
And now, I hope what comes next, beyond the world of Facebook, is problem solving. Because really, how could something that senseless and tragic be because of just one cause? But rather, a whole wicked combination of combustible factors that exploded into what became a national tragedy. Every aspect of it should be looked at and reexamined. There is a lot of screaming about gun control...but it's so much more than that. It's about diagnosing and assistance for the mentally ill...it's about a desensitization to gun violence through realistic video games...it's about keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, especially those that have been desensitized to gun violence....it's about safety in schools...it's about the media and how the race to be the first to cover a tragedy in our world of instant access to online information may not always lead to the most appropriate coverage. All of it, all of it needs to be assessed so the problem solving can begin, and I have faith that it will. There are twenty smiling little angels to make sure of it this time.
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