Time to stop arguing and look for an agreement

This is a tough week for America. Children and teachers are dead. Whiteboards and desks, No. 2 pencils and glue sticks are splattered with the blood of children and the blood of the adults who teach them. Many more humans are traumatized and will never return to a classroom, carrying the pain of a soldier’s heart in a disorder called post-traumatic stress.

A young man, whose only answer to his disordered life is to carry a gun into a school and shoot as many people as he can, will die in a cell that offers no answers.

As a civilized nation we debate, argue, fight and cry, holding tightly to our beliefs. Ban all guns, no one needs an assault rifle, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun, it’s not a gun issue, it’s a mental health issue. The rhetoric of one’s political leaning offer clichés and quips reinforcing the unwavering stance of the unthinking masses. Something more must be added to the conversation.

This is not a debate as so many on social and news media portray. Children and adults are dying — no more birthday parties, no hugging parents, no late-night conversations about life and how to navigate a world that has no road map. Dead people can’t have a conversation. School shootings cannot be argued like a high school debate team, using Robert’s Rules of Order to make a point and persuade an audience to believe in their view, but this is what we do. Five minutes on Facebook convinces me that no one has an original idea to end these killings, or even the desire to want to listen to another’s point of view.

I have a personal interest in this conversation. I am a principal in an elementary school, I am a psychotherapist, I am a veteran of the Air Force where I carried a handgun every day, I own guns, I hunt and I have grandchildren who attend public school. In full disclosure, every time someone enters my school, I look him or her over, head to toe, looking for signs of a concealed weapon. Unable to carry a gun in my school, I have a baseball bat behind my door and my office manager has wasp spray underneath her desk to spray a potential intruder in the eyes. I will keep my students safe by every means legally possible.

With my background and experience, I should have the answer to this national crisis, but I don’t. Is it a mental health issue? Yes! We need to do a better job at identifying and treating people with mental struggles, but as a nation, we decided in the 1980s to deinstitutionalize mental health care and are still struggling with the outcome of this decision.

Is it a gun issue? Yes! We need to sell guns to those who can be responsible gun owners and not glorify guns. When the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004, the desire to own an “assault rifle” spiked tremendously. Assault rifles also became the gun of choice for the deadliest school shooters. Gun magazines with pictures of assault rifles in the hands of powerful men dressed in camouflage attire creates an image of war, masculinity and power — a deadly cocktail for a mentally ill man trying to find purpose in his world — leaving an existential message to the survivors of his murderous rampage; I exist!

I expect some to offer condemnation to my views, even though I really didn’t express any. As I said, I don’t have the answer. I expect some to praise my approach seeing something in my writing that isn’t there. The real problem is, gun control and killing kids is so diametrically opposed to each other that one often feels the need to find an answer to make sense out of this nonsensical issue. It’s time to stop the argument and look for agreement.

The only answer to solve the horidious proliferation of mass murders in the United States is for the right and the left, Republicans and Democrats, gun owners and gun opposers, mental health professionals and adjudication advocates, President Trump lovers and President Trump haters to get together, look at the science, examine the evidence and change policy based on the findings. It sounds so simple, and it truly is if people can regain their humanity and realize these beautiful lives lost are real people; not political puppets.

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Send comments or other suggestions to William Rutherford at bprutherford@hotmail.com or visit pensiveparenting.com.