Adam Gopnik, when opening his essay on the Virginia Tech shooting, brings forth an image of the phones of the killed students ringing endlessly as the police clear away the bodies. As I'm sure it was meant to do, it really makes you think about the families and friends of victims of shootings, and of the 9/11 attacks, frantically trying to make contact and failing. Of course all of our hearts go out to those people, and we should do what we can to come together as a country; comfort them and help them to heal, to paraphrase Tim Kaine's comment. I think he may be missing part of the point though.
He doesn't want to focus on the politics of the situation; he says he's just thinking about the families. I can't really speak for them, but if I were those families, I would want someone to start making steps to prevent this from happening again. Now. We should all show support by trying to make some changes. I've always supported stricter gun control. Many shootings happen because mentally unstable people with violent tendencies are allowed to purchase a gun. Furthermore, I don't believe there is any real reason for an ordinary citizen to own a gun. Most would say it's for protection, but if we had more restrictive laws, people would feel less of a need to protect themselves with a gun. If we want to prevent these horrible events from repeating, we need to make some of these changes. As Gopnik says, "The point of lawmaking is not to act as precisely as possible, in order to punish the latest crime; it is to act as comprehensively as possible, in order to prevent the next one."
I felt that Susan Sontag's essay was a bit of a complaint piece with a very vauge solution. I agree with her that America isn't OK; everything is not just fine. Everyone can see that, even now. We have a lot of difficult problems to solve and huge messes to clean up as a country. Yes, we should unite and be strong. But, I think a lot of people didn't--and still don't--really know what's going on. Not all sources are reliable, and many people have been misinformed or are simply not paying attention. In any case, many don't really know the reality. Sontag says, "Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together." I completely agree with this statement. The question that she has failed to give a complete answer to is: how? How do we get everybody to see the reality? And, how do we do this while still staying united, as we so desperately need to be? Reality is guaranteed to make some people angry or disbelieving. It's something to think about.
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Nice response, Sarah. The image of the cell phones ringing in the dead kids' pockets is a chilling one, and, in terms of writing, a pretty effective way to start a discussion on gun control. Gopnik is a pretty fierce writer; well read some more of his stuff in the fall.
ReplyDeleteGood job keeping up with the posts. Keep writing, and check out some of your classmates' stuff, too, if you haven't already.