Knee-jerk Reactions

It’s the holiday season again which means a lot of people going through depression.  While it’s not exactly true that there is a huge spike in suicides around this time of year it is certainly true that there are more deaths due to cold and hunger. I’m not sure why Christmas and Hanukah fall in the most depressing time of year.  Maybe it was just a little piece of genius to try and cheer everyone up?  This year is going to be especially sad for Newtown, CT and to make matters worse, we as a society have become such a conglomerated group of insensitive politicians that the bodies of those children had not even been removed from the school and people were debating gun laws.  I found it pretty disgusting on both sides; though I’m a pretty down the middle kind of person I found the liberal tactics to be a little more evil. The conservative arguments were predictable and straight forward, the liberal side made it a point to both chide conservatives for using the incident and in the same statement say that we need to start removing firearms from people.  My own personal view is that no one should have even mentioned these things until at least the children were buried.  This is a time to support, help, console, and aid that town and those people.  I have grown so tired of seeing the mad man’s face plastered all over the news.  The media has in my opinion been fairly irresponsible in the manner in which they have been putting out information.  The public has been jumping to conclusions and ultimately just using this as a way to push their own opinions on people.  Before you speak think about this, a gun ban won’t take one weapon off the streets, it will only change what is produced in the future.  There will still be literally millions of these weapons out there.  I want to know why no one in the media has mentioned how stupid and irresponsible that man’s mother was.  Call me insensitive but I’m just gonna call a spade a spade.  That idiot of a woman had a son with serious mental issues and she chose to take him to the gun range on a regular basis, she chose to have several unsecured weapons in her home, she chose to leave him alone quite often while she went to the bar (where she was described as “very popular”), she chose to let him know she was going to have him committed, and she chose to allow him to have a .22 rifle of his own.  This woman was stupid.  I want to know why people’s first reaction is to push an agenda.  I’m a Christian but I don’t feel like you have to be a Christian, or even religious, to be a good person.  I’m already tired of seeing Christians telling everyone that the only thing that could have prevented tragedy is belief in a Christian god.  I’m not aware of very many shootings in Madrasas or Mesivtas.  I really wish that as a society our first reaction would have been to push an agenda of sending help.  I really wish that I hadn't seen a political statement within the first 10 minutes after the news broke.  Lisa Ling’s first tweet, minutes after the news, was “Why are we still not seriously talking about gun control?” then a few minutes later she mentioned the families.  I think that’s a pretty good representation of both sides’ insensitivity.  I just don’t understand how or why we have become so self-centered as a society, maybe I’ll address that in the next writing.