How it will go….

The shootings in DC are a senseless tragedy.

Nonetheless, there is pretty much a predictable script of how the reactions will go.

First of course, comes the shock of it all.

Then the fascination with which we all will watch the news. Followed by Tweets, Facebook posts and the like. There will be a demand for "solemnity"-no dry quips about someone going postal allowed. ( Even when there is a 50-50 chance that it might be that).  Decorum you know. Someone else's decorum. The victims , many of whom are probably government employees or military personnel will be praised as heroes. ( Which they are).

Then the night will pass and the second day will begin. The questions will start. The dead shooter's name will be released. If its a Muslim name or something foreign-the terrorism speculation will climb and climb. If it is not-then will come the ever familar " Its too soon to speculate about changing gun laws" speech. The slants of news reports will begin-as will the finger pointing back and forth.

On the third day the volume will increase, and it will still be too soon to talk about America's gun laws. If there is even the slighest indication that it was an outside attack-the berating of the country's foreign policy will begin. If its a disgruntled employee, well, it still won't be time to talk about America's gun laws. Or America's economics.  Crazy people you know-no lessons for the greater populace. 

On the fourth day, it will still be too soon to talk about meaningful gun control in America. ( This will repeat for the next 365 days).

The immediacy will recede-some more details will emerge and the in depth analysis will begin.

Finally, some two weeks later-Congress will refuse to vote to fund those heroic military personnel and government civilians a budget or a pay raise-because we have to worry about the "children" and the crushing debt that will be left to them. It will still be too soon to talk about America's crazy gun laws.  Within a few days the finger pointing about security will begin-and it will get even harder to get on a military base. But we "still thank them for their service". We just refuse to reward them for it.

And so on. This is the way it works.  

I can't tell you how strange this looks from the other side of the Atlantic. Not the details of the shooting — although those seem strange enough — but the very fact of it. I am sitting right now in a part of Ireland in which the gun played a tragic role in the country's politics all the way up into the 1930's. (The guerrilla fighting during the Irish Civil War was particularly brutal in Kerry.)  Nobody here is unfamiliar with firearms. But this kind of thing — an armed madman or, worse, three armed madmen — is so alien that it seems to be taking place in an alternate reality. Other countries simply don't have these things. Or, if they do, they have them so rarely that, when one occurs, as occurred in Australia, the county gets very tough on firearms and changes its laws. The Teachable Moments actually teach something. It is more than odd to be sitting in another country, watching the news scroll by, and to realize that your country, the one that your grandparents braved a leaky boat and the north Atlantic to get to, is a country that has a several of these every couple years, and accepts it as part of the cost of those essential freedoms your grandparents sought. It is very much like being part of another world.

 

 

UPDATE! If you have any doubts about what will happen-the Twitter beating David Frum is being subjected to for these tweets should remind you why I am right. BTW I am highly entertained by the all the folks that missed the sarcasm 🙂

 

Exit mobile version