Drowing in the Aftermath of the Washington Navy Yard Shooting

This week Aaron Alexis went on a shooting spree at the Washington Navy Yard, killing 12 people before being killed himself in a gunfight.  The incident was a tragedy by any measure. But I’ve been disappointed at the race by both the left and right to capitalize on the carnage. 

The gun control crowd was predictable; being rational has never been a prerequisite for joining that parade.  Even Dr. Janice Orlowski, chief medical officer at MedStar Hospital where many of the victims were taken, took time out from reporting on the medical conditions to exposit on the politics of the event.

“There is something evil in our society that we as Americans have to work to try to eradicate. There is something wrong here when we have these multiple mass shootings, these multiple injuries.”

Good thing we had someone with 20+ years of college to point that out for us. 

The media, of course, gladly filled in the blanks by reminding us that 26 were shot at Sandy Hook elementary, 6 at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, 12 in Aurora, 6 in Tucson, 13 at Fort Hood, and 32 at Virginia Tech.  The obvious implication is that since all of these people died from gunshot wounds, this is clearly the most significant problem in our society today.

Eric Bolling of Fox News “The Five” pointed out that

“11,000 guns last year caused murders, 11,000 people died at the hands of gun that wasn't a suicide. Four hundred forty-four thousand cigarettes. Car accidents accounted for about 40,000. Alcohol, 80,000.

But they blame the person in every single example with the exception of guns and now they want to blame the guns."

As effective as it is to surf an emotional tidal wave in the aftermath of a tragedy, clearly gun control advocates aren’t really concerned about the loss of life or they would take on a long list of issues responsible for more deaths in America before they got to mass shootings. 

But I was even more disappointed in the way the right pounced on the issue of mental illness as the obvious problem.  It pretty much goes without saying that anyone who takes a gun into a school, mall, public event or workplace and starts randomly killing people is not mentally stable.  This act is the very definition of being a danger to society.  Again, we don’t need someone with 4 degrees and 20+ years of medical practice to make this diagnosis in hindsight.  In the case of Aaron Alexis, they point to some strange comments he made about people talking to him through the walls and ceiling of his hotel room and sending microwaves into his body to deprive him of sleep.   

Well, obviously he should have wrapped in a straight jacket, been locked in a padded room and fed oatmeal through a slot in the door for the rest of his life.  With some reservation I have to admit, sometimes people talk to me through the walls at my house. It’s because they are too lazy to get up and walk to the doorway where they can see me.  And lord knows, if you ever have problems sleeping it means you are just one hair's breadth away from going on a shooting rampage at the nearest public building. 

Really, what are we proposing should have been done?  Are we going to start declaring people sane or mentally ill based on whether they say or do anything we find strange?  How many family members could you have committed before the weekend?  And who is to say what ‘strange’ means? 

Violent video games was also mentioned as a contributing factor.  I actually missed the video game era, but my kids play them.  Does that make them the next Aaron Alexis?  

An ounce of reasoned analysis reveals that we wouldn’t want to live in a society in which we could be denied constitutional rights simply because a neighbor thought we were strange.  So why the mad rush to declare a cause after these kinds of incidents?

As described above, we see some who are simply opportunists who can’t let a good tragedy go to waste.  But this doesn’t explain all the behavior.  The reality is that nobody wants to think this could happen where they live, work, worship or play.  They want to believe that the kind of person who could do this is easy to spot, and someone was grossly negligent in their duty to lock them away from the rest of us.  The suggestion that someone can ‘just snap without warning’ makes us panic like a swimmer too far from the dock, so we gladly cling to anything disguised as a life preserver even if it turns out to be a brick. 

Perhaps we can take a page from the gun control activists and agree to a 30-day waiting period before advocating any serious policy initiatives in the wake of a tragedy.   That would give us some time to separate logic from fear, anger, heartache and panic.