The Year That Was: Gun Violence

Virginia Tech.

Omaha, Nebraska.

Sean Taylor’s home in a Miami suburb.

A Chicago city bus.

These are just a few of the locations where gun violence took place, robbing countless Americans of their lives. We have some excellent gun laws in this country.  They are just not well-enforced to any degree worth mentioning.

We have a 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, which is quite reasonable and is being well-defended in the courts against the efforts of some (like the district/city of Washington D.C.) to go too far to deny the use of that right to law-abiding Americans.   Yet some defenders of that sacred right to modest self-defense are mindless zealots who cannot begin to understand or care about why some of these laws are being passed or why its utterly understandable why an average American should not be able to buy of the dozens of weapons without a background check (at the least).

We need to cast the zealots out from both sides of the argument and get serious here.  We cannot allow gang members, aspiring mass murderers and terrorists to have easy access to guns, yet they continue to do so to this day, six years after 9/11.  We can never stop gun violence, nor can we ever “stop” terrorism. Yet we can utilize our laws, our intelligence and our shared interests to do more to reduce the specter of such appalling acts happening in America. 

It is a gross understatement to say that I, like many others, am sick of counting the bodies and burying the victims.  Have we as a country stopped caring about making this country better?  Why do we tolerate pugnacious lobbies like the NRA who hijack the passage of reasonable laws and policies and deny law enforcement the tools needed to reduce gun violence in this country?  Why am I as a gun-owner represented by such an organization? Aren’t there other, more reasonable actors out there?

 In the meantime, two victims of this year’s madness stood out for their selfless heroism in the face of super-empowered individuals who sought it upon themselves to inflict terror on the citizenry. 

Liviu Librescu was a Virginia Tech professor of Romanian Jewish heritage who survived the Nazis, the Communists to brilliantly succeed in this country and around the world in his academic fields. He was felled by a mentally ill gunman who was provided by the media the attention of global infamy he always craved. 

Professor Librescu was credited by his students with saving their lives. After being shot the first time, he managed to block the door the gunman was trying to enter long enough for all but one of his students to escape.  His death was senseless to the extreme, considering that it is beyond insane that a man who survived such evil as Hitler and Stalin would be killed because of the failure of multiple systems of American governance.

Blair Holt was a 16 year old Chicago student who was gunned down on a city bus by a gang member while protecting the life of a classmate.  Going to school in a part of the city that is essentially part of the domestic “Gap”, his death was perhaps not as unforseen as that of other Americans yet it speaks volumes for the utter lack of progress that has been made to counter the near strangehold on terror and force that gangs have in parts of many American cities. 

He was a good student, admired by his peers and with a bright future ahead of him. 

Just two of the many gun victims heard about on the news this year.  Whether or not their deaths were preventable is a good question, but with the NRA and its allies blocking legislation that would empower law enforcement and the courts to do their jobs and the Congress and other government officials focusing on passing new laws at the expense of strengthening or just properly funding existing ones, there will be only be more of them.

On Christmas

I woke up this morning on the ship (this is now my 5th consecutive Christmas holiday spent on a naval war vessel and my last as I leave the Navy in 4 days) and was in a predictably rotten mood.  Not for being on the ship (one gets used to that) but for once again leaving good friends and people behind as I transitition from Everett, WA to Greensboro, NC for school. 

It is especially hard this time because as a supervisor, I had developed a good rapport with my people, some of whom I have grown exceptionally fond of, given that I taught them a great deal and was honored to be an integral part of their progression, professional triumphs and their recent promotions.  If teaching compares to this, I don’t know if I could be a teacher, because letting go is absolutely agonizing.  Even without the friendships that develop, its a major letdown. 

So, in need of some form of Christmas cheer on a dreary, overcast Everett morning, I happened to read a fantastic story in the NYT about a unique school in Decatur, GA that brings together refugee children with American children into a learning experience like no other:

(Photo by Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times)

“Georgia School as a Laboratory for Getting Along”
Parents at an elementary school here gathered last Thursday afternoon with a holiday mission: to prepare boxes of food for needy families fleeing some of the world’s horrific civil wars.

The community effort to help refugees resembled countless others at this time of year, with an exception. The recipients were not many thousands of miles away. They were students in the school and their families.

More than half the 380 students at this unusual school outside Atlanta are refugees from some 40 countries, many torn by war. The other students come from low-income families in Decatur, and from middle- and upper-middle-class families in the area who want to expose their children to other cultures. Together they form an eclectic community of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Muslims, well-off and poor, of established local families and new arrivals who collectively speak about 50 languages.

“The fact that we don’t have anything in common is what we all have in common,” said Shell Ramirez, an American parent with two children at the school.

The International Community School, which goes from kindergarten through sixth grade, began five years ago to address a pressing local problem: how to educate a flood of young refugees. It has evolved into a laboratory for the art of getting along, a place that embraces the idea that people from different cultures and classes can benefit one other, even as administrators, teachers and parents acknowledge the many practical difficulties. 

The school has been relatively successful thus far, but they still have a yearly shortfall of about $400,000 in funding which they have to privately raise.  Having spent time with refugee children in the Seattle area over the past year (and witnessed their struggles in public and even private school systems), I can attest that an experiment like this has a chance to become something far more meaningful; a standout example with plenty of merit for replication throughout the country and even around much of the world.  Imagine something like this taking root in Japan or France.  Its improbable but worth exploring.

Please read more about the International Community School and consider donating to the school or just buying a book for the school’s Amazon Wish List. 

Christmas Meme

Tagged by the most excellent friend Adam Elkus, here I go as I wait to be picked up for a “Christmas dinner”.

 The rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share Christmas facts about yourself.
3. Tag seven random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Welcome to the Christmas edition of “Getting to Know Your Friends.”

1. Wrapping or gift bags?

Wrapped, by some Boy Scout/Girl Scout troop preferably… its fun to tip kids for good work, I miss those days from shoveling snow from neighbor’s driveways….

2. Real or artificial tree?

TDAXP brought up a good point when I admired his awesome Christmas tree last month; the real ones are a serious fire hazard and I don’t want to have my first Christmas tree next year take out my apartment.

 3. When do you put up the tree?

Only have put up a tree once in the last 5 years, its hard to get in the Christmas spirit when you were on duty 4 of the 5 Christmas holidays.  I put a tiny one I bought at a Keikyu train stop up in the office in 2004 the weekend after Thanksgiving, that was fun until somebody took it upon themselves to defile it with a condom at the tip and two naked Barbie dolls at the base. (Sailors….)

4. When do you take the tree down?

 In that case when the Chief came in (a devout Filipino Catholic) and yelled at all of us for 10 minutes or so about respect for Jesus and people’s beliefs….

5. Do you like egg nog?

I’ve never had it.

6. Favorite gift received as a child?

A pocket-sized book set of abridged classic novels for children when I was 7 (33 in all, including “Ben-Hur”, “The Count of Monte Cristo”, “Around The World In 80 Days”.)

7. Do you have a nativity scene?
No. Sounds cool though.  It can’t be a “White” Joseph and Mary though, that really grates on my nerves these days.

8. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
A lump of coal from a less than favorite aunt for my stepbrother and I after he told her she needed to go to charm school and quit putting make up on the morning with a butter knife.

9. Mail or email Christmas cards?
Mail. One of the only traditions I have.

10. Favorite Christmas Movie?

Tie: George C. Scott’s version of “A Christmas Carol” & “Love Actually”.  Watching “Children of Men” on Christmas Day last year was quite memorable though…

 11. When do you start shopping for Christmas?

Autumn.

12. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?

Everything available on the table. Boat food sucks especially on Christmas… nobody wants to be there so no effort gets put into the meal.

13. Clear lights or colored on the tree?

Clear.

14. Favorite Christmas song(s)?

Nat King Cole “Silent Night”.  The Japanese teenagers playing in a jazz band outside the Keikyu train station in Yokosuka two years ago had a supreme version of “Joy To The World!” that I wish I could have recorded for eternity.

15. Travel at Christmas or stay home?

In the future I want to stay home with my soon to be wife after we spend the morning at a childrens’ or veterans’ hospital. I want Christmas to be far more than standing watch on the quarterdeck freezing my bum off.

16. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer?

Nope.  There’s a song for that though right?

17. Angel on the tree top or a star?

Star… just more cool options that way.

18. Open the presents Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning?

With my wife, perhaps go to the bank vault @ like 4 am that morning and then open them. I’m certain she’ll have nefarious designs on opening hers if they are anywhere in the house before Christmas AM, she just can’t bear the surprise.

19. Most annoying thing about this time of year?

How people so easily ignore the fact that Christmas “feelings” (unity, goodwill, selflessness, love, faith) are supposed to be honored year-round instead of just one day of the year. 

20. Do you decorate your tree in any specific theme or color?

No. 

21. What do you leave for Santa?

A flask with Hennessy in it.

22. Least favorite holiday song?

None, they’re all okay it seems.

23. Favorite ornament?

A Sugar Bear that plays two songs… its 14 years old now and still working as if it was right out of the cereal box.

24. Family tradition?

None.

25. Ever been to Midnight Mass or late-night Christmas Eve services?

Yes.  My good feelings turned into horror a day later when the tsunami happened though.

I will pass along this tag to the following blog compadres:

Politics And Soccer

The Strategist

MountainRunner

Chirol

Ry

Soldier Of Africa

Phil @ Pacific Empire

Merry Christmas Everyone!