'I'm sorry but your child is dead'
All of these arguments going on around me, arguments about whether we have the right to have guns, or whether guns kill people or people kill people, or whether gun control will save lives. And the arguments are hollow, devoid of the pathos of murder and death, empty of the moment between life and death, so empty of the blackness of staring into the oblivion, hearing the words, “I am sorry but your child is dead.”
Have you spoken those words? Have you sat and stared at a blank piece of paper, wishing that the eulogy you will speak the next day to bring non-existent comfort to parents who are burying their child would suddenly appear and save you the shallowness of knowing that despite the necessity to speak there is nothing really to say? If you have, then you understand.
I am not alone knowing this reality. But I hear no one discussing it. I nearly wrote just now, “senselessly lost a child,” but I took out “senselessly.” No child’s death makes sense. No death really makes sense, at the deepest emotional level. Death is absurd, so we concoct hopeful stories as to what it means. But in the final analysis we all know that the reason we recite those stories, “Rabbi, what do we believe about afterlife,” is because death attacks the very notion that life possesses ultimate meaning. You may as well say to a parent, “Come here a moment, I want to grasp your heart and tear it out of your chest; I want to smother your breathing with my fist; I want to gouge my fingers into your eyes so that even if you still can see light you will not really be able to see at all, everything will become a hellish mystery.”
Horror. Horror films attempt to engender an emotion that will dissipate. The horror flows through your pores and back into the world. There’s a relief, a catharsis from the experience. It’s a false horror, a manufactured emotion. It’s the new virtual world so many try to live in. Murder; snatching a screaming child from her umbilical mother’s arms, placing her in a box, lowering the box into the ground, saying a final goodbye. That, that is horror. Horror churns in the bowels like a whirlpool in a sewer, tearing out your guts but unable to be discharged. If you have great defenses, you maybe can slow the churn, make yourself focus on something else for seconds, even minutes. But it explodes back, and shreds seams in your life fabric you didn’t even realize could be torn apart.
A woman hears a noise, descends the basement steps, finds her husband’s body on the floor and his brains splattered on the stone walls, blood everywhere. A young girl grows up without a father, gunned down on a whim after a robbery. I cannot adequately describe such scenes. They overwhelm my mind. I imagine that in war at least you know you could die. But a 6 year old leaves home for school, and her mangled, lifeless body is placed in your arms that afternoon? This is not an event. This is the world’s destruction; this is beyond hell, at least hell has some order, some defining characteristic, you are there for a reason. But a murdered child’s body defies reason, scorns reason. It is a freefall into the chaotic abyss.
And these people, who have experienced none of this, debate whether they should be allowed to own a weapon manufactured for three reasons: to kill people, to give a marksman a thrill, and to make a profit for gun companies.
There is no pathos in these debates, and without pathos they are absurd. I cannot bear them. Murder of a child makes insanity a realistic description of the world because if your child is murdered it’s the best description of what’s real. And if you cannot understand that, you ought not be in this debate, because this is the central fact with which it begins.
Mark Levin is rabbi of Congregation Beth Torah in Overland Park, KS.
Jim Mccarthy
5 months, 1 week agoToo many guns and not enough common sense.
Matt Henry
5 months, 1 week agoI wonder how many of our lawmakers have experienced the violent death of a child in such a manner that they have the proper amount of pathos to participate in this debate? Has Mr. Obama, who is said to be considering making this decision for all of us himself through executive order, experienced enough tragic loss to be qualified to make this decision? Who gets to decide?
Is it not possible that those who have experience such grave loss are incapable of making a decision that serves the best interest of the most people, in favor of the one thing that might have made a difference in their own case? For example, should someone who lost a loved one is a car accident in which the person was killed by the air bag (which does happen) decide for the rest of us (or be more qualified to be in the debate) about the safety of airbags? Perhaps the decision they make wouldn’t be what, more often than not, saves lives….
Perhaps, just perhaps, this fine man, who clearly believes certain weapons are designed to do nothing more than kill people and give us cheap thrills, has so much pathos that he is incapable of making a decision that weighs the good with the bad. Perhaps, because he is so close to the issue, he cannot properly visualize the times most common where the very things he seems to abhor has saved lives, or have given some pause not to attempt the very things that would otherwise lead to destruction.
Curt A. Hodapp
5 months agoAgain, I wish people would stop hiding behind children, Jesus or God; to make their point. If your argument can hold together without using children to hid behind use it. If not maybe you should rethink it.
How many parents receive a knock on the door or a phone call informing them that their child is dead; because of a car accident.
Car accidents kill more children than people shooting children with a fire arm and we do not talk about banning them? Why not? I will be more than happy to give mine up.
However, I will give up my right to own a gun. That right is given to us but the constitution; unlike healthcare that is not. I will fight to protect this right for everyone.
John Lantos
5 months agoSince Newtown, I’ve read the analogies to between car deaths and gun deaths many times. It seems to be the new trope of those who oppose new regulations on gun sales or gun ownership. But it doesn’t quite work - there is no right to drive a car. It is a privilege. To earn it, one must take a test to show that one can drive safely. One must renew one’s license periodically. Cars and roads and safety devices are designed to allow the beneficial effects of driving while minimizing the risks. So car and driver licensing would be an excellent model for gun regulation. Every gun would require a license. Every sale would have to be reported. Every gun owner would need to pass a test, including a physical exam and background check, to show that they are physically and emotionally capable of owning and using a gun. There would be sensible age restrictions (in Israel, for example, one has to be 27 to buy a gun, show that you have a valid reason, then pass medical and psychological testing. Then, you can get a license that must be renewed every three years.) So, yes, let’s regulate guns the way we regulate cars. That would not violate our constitutional rights! Good idea, Curt.
Phil Cardarella
5 months agoWell said, John. But, with one flaw. The actual right involved in licensing drivers is the right to travel. We all have a righ to travel — but when we choose to do so other than by foot, we are subjected to reasonable regulation.
While I might disagree that the Constitution guarantees an individual right to bear arms, granting one does not mean that your right extends beyond maintianing a musket at your home or farm. To protect OUR rights to life and liberty and freedom to pursue happiness, your right to bear arms can and should be reasonably regulated.
Like walking or taking a bus, the threshhold for keeping a shotgun or hunting rifle in your home should be low. Even non-violent felons might qualify. Why shouldn’t an ex-doper be able to hunt?
But, as the potential for harm to others rises, so should the regulation. Cities should be treated differently from rural areas — just like speed limits vary for safety. Want an easily concealable weapon like a handgun? Get trained and licensed. Have a mandatory place of safe storage, away from kids. NOT in your glove compartment, fool! Sorta like a drivers license.
Want to carry a weapon concealed? REGULAR retraining and re-licensing at a minimum — and NEVER carried in a place where alcohol is served. DUH! Also, CITIES of a certain size should be allowed to have bans on carrying concealed or not. Maybe like a chauffeurs license.
Given that I have yet to hear anyone come up with a rationale for some kinds of weaponry and massive magazines that does not rely on the sheer joy of hearing 80 blasts a minute (Go buy some firecrackers!) or black helicopters from the UN (Go see a shrink!), I have to say that my right to life — and the right to life of first-graders everywhere — has to trump your desire for a dangerous toy.
So, yes, the right to travel is the model for the right to bear arms.