SEIDMAN SAYS: Americans must not become numb to deaths from gun violence

Ever since news broke of the mass shooting at a Texas elementary school that took 21 lives, 19 of them young children, it has not been far from my mind.

When the tragedy occurred, I’d already written a column for this space that centered on Pine View senior Zander Moricz’s brilliant graduation speech and the hope it brought for his and our country’s future. But in the wake of the carnage, it seemed irrelevant. Readers would expect my reaction to the shootings, I thought, and the weight of a responsibility to offer something astute, insightful, consoling, even hopeful, felt crushing.

Days later, I am still waiting for inspiration. Nothing I write seems meaningful as I listen to the redundant refrains: the “thoughts and prayers,” the explosions of outrage, the defenses of the Second Amendment. We have been here too many times before. So I sit with fingers frozen above the keyboard, tears dripping on my desk, thinking of those parents with empty chairs at the dinner table and irreparably broken hearts.

I suspect I feel as many Americans do – demoralized, frustrated and helpless to change the course of a culture that has become foreign and unfathomable. I was raised by parents who made sure their children knew how fortunate they were to grow up in a land founded on freedom from persecution and freedom of choice, where opportunities abounded if your heart was pure and your work ethic strong. I felt lucky and proud to be a U.S. citizen.

Yet in recent years, as I’ve watched our political leaders condone, embrace or enact exclusions and inhumanities, I’m no longer so prideful. The interpretation of the words freedom and patriotism have been so distorted as to be antithetical to the principles I was taught.

“Freedom” becomes a rationale for an insurrection on the Capitol, a rejection of face masks that could protect others from a potentially deadly virus, or the right to own an arsenal of assault weapons. “Patriotism” justifies demeaning and rejecting immigrants, people of color and anyone with an opposing political stance. Even displaying an American flag draws assumptions and rhetoric.

Worse still, we seem to have become inured to the death toll this choice of self over selflessness has fueled. The ascending statistics  – 110 gun deaths a day; more than 40,000 gun victims a year, nearly 24,000 by suicide – become meaningless numbers, detached from the lost lives they represent. It’s a tolerance of death and suffering unheard of and unacceptable in other countries. (And it’s not just gun deaths. When we recently passed the million mark of the number of lives lost to COVID, it caused barely a ripple in the news stream.)

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, almost half of Americans list gun violence within the top five crises the country faces today (behind healthcare, the deficit, violent crime and immigration). Eighty percent support some degree of stricter gun laws. So it’s not that we don’t care – we just don’t care enough. We feel so overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem and the inconsequentiality of our lone voice, we look to someone or something else to provide the solution.

“That’s how people treat this,” says Carol Rescigno, president of Brady Sarasota, an affiliate of the national gun violence prevention group. “They’re horrified, they go on Facebook and say ‘When are they going to do something about this?’ And I always think, ‘Who is ‘they’?”

We are “they.”

Our mistake comes in thinking that if we can’t stop the carnage altogether and immediately, there is nothing we can do. Instead, says Rescigno, she and other activists take a “long haul” view, celebrating the smaller, incremental steps that edge us closer to the greater goal.

While a polarized Congress has stalled reforms, several states have passed bills increasing gun safety and protective measures. Even here in Florida -- where every year a bill is proposed to allow citizens to carry loaded concealed handguns in public without going through a background check, licensing, fingerprinting or training (something Gov. Ron DeSantis supports) – response to the Parkland school shootings catalyzed extreme risk protection orders and increased school security.

So don’t shout “Enough!” in capital letters on social media. Join your local Brady affiliate, or a national organization like Everytown for Gun Safety, Sandy Hook Promise or Moms Demand Action. Do anything and everything you can to put consistent and relentless pressure on elected officials who refuse to support common sense gun violence prevention and safety efforts.  If you have guns, make sure they are safely secured and stored without ammunition.

And most importantly, study the voting record of your current congressmen and senators on gun legislation. Then, when the election comes around, vote out of office those who have repeatedly chosen protection of their own power over protection of innocent lives.

People like to say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Look at what you have (or haven’t) done to prevent gun violence in the past and commit to what more you will do in the future.

Forget about making America great again. Let’s make America sane again.

Contact columnist Carrie Seidman at carrie.seidman@gmail.com or (505) 238-0392.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: To make America sane again, we must finally address gun violence