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Images such as this are displayed by Facebook users in paying tribute to the 20 first graders among the 26 people killed in Friday's Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- There’s no word for a parent who loses a child. There shouldn’t have to be one.
Innocent children are the images of purity, of selflessness, and of innocence before what we call society corrupts what was innately good. And now, children are the victims.
On Friday one of my classmates and I had been on a bus heading back towards my school from a field trip when something repeating faintly over the radio caught our attention: “Elementary school shooting.” The idea that that phrase is in existence is sickening against our own existence. But we heard right and as much of the U.S. knows, Sandy Hook Elementary School is suffering a loss that’s unthinkable.
And the sad part is, as time goes by and our world gets older, what’s unthinkable just keeps happening and in the most morbid way, the grieving process for these events becomes routine.
The fact that the victims in this tragedy were primarily first graders is disturbing. Yes, children are victims from time to time when they are in the wrong place at the wrong time, but at an elementary school? They were supposed to be there.
Although my voice is just another stranger to the families struggling with an incomprehensible loss, whether it be of a child, brother, sister, wife, mother, friend, I still offer my condolences, whether that has any meaning or not.
One part of events like this that could go either way, is how the whole country tries to make the tragedy their own: they grieve, they relate, they cry, together. However, the families who physically lost their children who died before they experienced their eighth Christmas have national attention on them and their grief is pictured on every newspaper for the country to pretend they have a part in.
It happens with every tragedy; we all remember the countless memorials held for Caylee Anthony because Florida and America as a whole saw that baby as their own. I’m sure the families will use the support to get through the unbearable days they have ahead, but already the stories of the children lost are being marketed in politics and the news.
Gun control debates are everywhere. Not debates on offering psychological help to those that people suspect could use it. Not debates on the amount of people that are depressed and undiagnosed. But debates on gun control and school safety.
I think at the end of the day, people with enough in them to plan a massacre such as this one, are going to get guns and they’re going to get wherever they plan on because they’re motivated to do so. I also think that the political divide that’s still apparent even as a country suffers a loss of young lives, is what’s wrong with our country.
But to see a president, who had no personal connection with the victims except one of a shared, free country, cry at their loss like they were his own children, shows that there’s hope and strength to come.
Besides gun control and the lack of safety in schools, divorce, violent video games, violent TV shows, the shooter’s mother, (who was also a victim), and pop culture are being blamed for the massacre. It’s funny how the shooter himself and his psychological problems can’t take the blame alone. I think it’s because he’s dead and the public needs something still in existence to blame. And that’s the problem.
Besides gun control and the lack of safety in schools, divorce, violent video games, violent TV shows, the shooter’s mother, (who was also a victim), and pop culture are being blamed for the massacre. It’s funny how the shooter himself and his psychological problems can’t take the blame alone. I think it’s because he’s dead and the public needs something still in existence to blame. And that’s the problem.
Perhaps it’s my new perspective on the media kicking in since one book has recently opened my eyes. If you haven’t read "Columbine," I highly recommend it, whether to understand the story with the true facts and analysis of the killers or just for the eye-opening descriptions of the media crimes that happen with every story.
We all know of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine. We inevitably compare every school shooting to 1999's Columbine. We define the shooting and the tragedy as the name of the school, Columbine. And already this tragedy is being called Newtown. Worse yet, the actual town rather than the school itself.
How would you feel if the town you lived in was forever attributed to a massacre of young children? I feel like closure would be impossible. And that’s all anyone wants. It’s the rush to closure. It’s the biggest media crime.
The media begins reporting on a news story as it's happening. They instantly start speculating with the little details they have (Think, Trench Coat Mafia that would wind up having no association to Eric and Dylan.)
As one news station reports a story, others create their own, mostly grabbing onto the speculations made by others.
As the story unfolds, facts quickly start being confused with speculation and as some are put down quickly, others take years to dispel and typically, it’s out of the public’s eye by then.
The killer wore all black. He was autistic. He was a loner. He was a child of a divorce. He stole guns. These are the facts that will live with this story the longest, I’m sure.
Even after a few days we can see the mistakes already made by media assumptions. He did not get buzzed into the school. The guns he used were his mother’s. His mother did not hold an actual job at the school. His brother played no part in the crime. But alas, even as the first questions were coming from the story, even as young children came face to face with a fatal gun, answers started being fabricated.
We all want answers. We all want the, “why.” But is that fair? Is it fair to close a case just for the sake of comfort while avoiding truth? I don’t think it even matters. Our country operates from tragedy to tragedy. How much news coverage of the victims of Hurricane Sandy has there been since the school shooting? And how long will the faces of young children occupy news channels and our thoughts? Probably until the next tragedy.
We all want answers. We all want the, “why.” But is that fair? Is it fair to close a case just for the sake of comfort while avoiding truth? I don’t think it even matters. Our country operates from tragedy to tragedy. How much news coverage of the victims of Hurricane Sandy has there been since the school shooting? And how long will the faces of young children occupy news channels and our thoughts? Probably until the next tragedy.
Sometimes I feel like the media makes life itself the tragedy. It’s the same way that deaths are glorified as heroic because someone’s death alone isn’t enough for the news. And who am I to talk?
Within this Internet newspaper and within this blog I have my own bias. I’ve heard my own stories of the loner with no compassion who acted on depression.
I’ve seen the news channels playing over and over again pictures of children who lost their lives. But I’m taking the initiative to not be biased against victims.
I’m not naming some children and leaving out others. The intentional avoidance of inserting the name of the killer is to avoid the glorification of his crime and also to pay respect to his family who are hardly being allotted mourning time of their own.
I didn’t open my story with, “The Second Worst Shooting in US History,” as if the number of casualties really discounts the tragic losses and the amount losses accounts for successes in a sociopath’s mind. The media feeds this kind of crime.
Eric Harris planned Columbine with thoughts to outnumber the losses Timothy McVeigh ensued in the Oklahoma City bombing and so many shootings are random and aimed for maximum human density. Killers have become celebrities.
I’m not a psychologist nor someone trained in personality analysis so I am in no way claiming credibility in any part of my blog. What I can bring up is hindsight bias or the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon that people claim after an event has already occurred.
I’m not a psychologist nor someone trained in personality analysis so I am in no way claiming credibility in any part of my blog. What I can bring up is hindsight bias or the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon that people claim after an event has already occurred.
Maybe the shooter’s family could have seen it coming. Maybe the school should have been ready. Maybe we all should be ready. But there is no real profile for a sociopath.
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