Another day, another massacre

I was planning on spending this post writing about the fact that my latest foster dog has been adopted. I was planning on writing this post about how excited I am to foster Allie. I was planning on writing about how happy I am that hockey is back. Instead, I'm having a hard time finding words to help me deal with yet another senseless attack and learning that thirteen people are dead from this shooting in my hometown, Washington DC.

Another shooting. Another mass killing. And, just like every other time this has happened, I can't help but wonder when this will stop being the norm for our country. When will we accept that something must change when twelve innocent people can be killed on a military base? When will we realize that there needs to be some sort of regulation as to the selling of an automatic weapon? When are we going to realize that just because "other people" have guns we should allow everyone to have guns?

Schools aren't safe. Movie theaters aren't safe. College campuses aren't safe. Office buildings aren't safe. Parks aren't safe. And even military bases are no longer safe. We can't feel safe anywhere because, in the back of our mind, we're conditioned to worry about this happening to us. We've gotten to the point that we all like to think we know how we would react when we're caught in this type of hell. It is now something that we have all, consciously or not, planned to happen in our lives.

Now is not the time for me or you to talk about how guns should be outlawed. Today, tomorrow, no time this week should be spent making this into a political issue. We need to spend time allowing the hundreds of people that lost a loved one time to grieve. We need to give the Navy Yard time to go back to as close to normal as possible. While none of the three thousand people there will ever forget what happened yesterday, they need time to heal.

What we do need to start doing is looking at our attitude that has us as a country fighting each other. There can't possibly be any sort of change in this mindset of fear when we can't even talk to each other about this problem. The fact that I'm worried about even putting into print that I think there needs to be serious reform around weapons is quite sad. But we need to at least start talking to each other about this. Not yelling. Not screaming. Not calling each other murders. Not claiming everyone is taking away your rights. We need an honest to god conversation about the atrocities that are happening every few months on our own American soil. We need to look at how we each individually are treating this. We need to look at our own attitudes, not wait for the other side to "come around."

I'm tired of turning on the news to hear of yet another shooting. I'm sick of spending my days trying to get in touch with family and friends that were in the area. I'm tired of reading articles about "How to Talk to Your Children About Tragedy". I'm so unbelievably tired of wondering when this is going to happen again.

As the "land of the free" we spend too much time in fear for ourselves and our loved ones.