Like everyone, I was shocked and horrified by the deaths in Littleton, Colorado last week. But I was equally stunned by the "leadership" provided by the President and the Speaker of the House. They asked that we "teach our children to resolve conflicts nonviolently" and "reject the culture of death"...while overseeing the bombing of Yugoslavia.
We like our answers simple and clean in America. We're not a culture who easily summons the outrage to tackle difficult issues in complex and courageous ways. Call it the fault of Soundbite Politics, National Economic Numbness or Mass ADD...we're looking for single scapegoats: the parents, movies, violent video games, abortion, liberals...and that's only a small sampling of the newspaper commentaries I've read this week.
The truth, I believe, is a combination of many things. But this country is unique in really only one element of the puzzle. People in Europe and Canada, for instance, have equal access to the same movies, youth cults and video games we do. What they don't have is access to guns. In 1996 there were 16 handgun-related deaths in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada...and 9,390 in the United States. Half of the deaths were children. That's 13 everyday. A Littleton, Colorado every single day.
Hunter and sportsmen don't need handguns. Neither does anyone else. You are 43 times more likely to be harmed by a firearm is you have one in your home than if you don't. When was the last time you heard of a drive-by knifing? I'm sorry, this is a no-brainer. If my kid is a pyromaniac I make sure there is no fuel and no match anywhere. But getting rid of handguns is not the sole solution. It's far more complicated than that. Blame whatever disconnect you want, as long as we prove to our children via our national policies that violence is the answer...whether it is in the battlefield or in the death chamber...we're never going to teach them otherwise. Teenagers, especially, have radar homed in to adult hypocrisy. And they see it everyday.
To quote my friend, Coleman McCarthy, "We teach mathematics as though the survival of the species depends on it, yet where are the studies of nonviolence and peace?" Our kids come home able to quote from memory the dates and players in all of our major wars but rarely learn about Gandhi, King, Tolstoy, Dorothy Day. Unless and until we start educating our children and ourselves...in the home and, yes, in the schools...about other ways to deal with differences and conflict our future will look darkly like our past. And the "back to basics" curriculum will continue to be Readin', 'Ritin', 'Rithmatic, and Retribution.
From Us
Words & music by John McCutcheon
From Us appears on John's recording Storied Ground. It is also available for download in MP3 format here.
There are bombs in Yugoslavia
Tests in Pakistan
Standoffs in Korea
And missiles in Iran
Guns in Guatemala
Tanks in Lebanon
Artillery in Africa
Where do they all come from?
They get ‘em from us
They get ‘em from us
They get ‘em from us
They get ‘em from us
They get ‘em from us
In a school in Pennsylvania
In a school in Arkansas
In a school in Kentucky
In cities large and small
In a school in California
In a school in Oregon
Where do they get the violence?
Where do they get the guns?
They get ‘em from us
They get ‘em from us
They get ‘em from us
They get ‘em from us
They get ‘em from us
A gun killed Medgar Evers
A gun killed JFK
A gun killed Martin Luther King
And hundreds every day
A gun killed Robert Kennedy
A gun killed Gandhi, too
A gun killed kids in Colorado
What are you gonna do?
Are you gonna…
Wait until the tragedy
Comes knocking on your door
Wait until your children
Are the ones upon the floor
Watch while our leaders
Just heap fuel upon the flame
Watch while war and violence
Just breed more of the same
How long will the many
Be held hostage by the few?
How long will the future
Reach its waiting hand to you?
For the seed is in the bullet
And the seed is in the heart
If things are ever gonna change
Where are we gonna start?
They’ve got to get it from us
They’ve got to get it from us
They’ve got to get it from us
They’ve got to get it from us
They’ve got to get it from us
They’ve got to get it from us
They’ve got to get it from us
They’ve got to get it from us
They’ve got to get it from us
They’ve got to get it from us
There are bombs in Yugoslavia
Guns in a school in Colorado
There are bombs in Yugoslavia
Guns in a school in Colorado
They get it from us
St. Paul, MN, April 1999
©1999 John McCutcheon/Appalsongs (ASCAP)