Who We the People really are

We cannot say it is none of us. Or that this is not local. The Las Vegas shooting has touched La Conner lives.

The massacre is the story, the event everyone is discussing – or at least was last week. This is this month’s shooting. It is true that violence is American as cherry pie. It is true that America is unique. Our individual and collective acquiescence to violence in our society provides the permission for shootings to continue. We allow the epidemic of killing to go on. By not stopping this sickness we are responsible for it.

The shooters are sick, mentally ill. But our silent society, why are we allowing the massacres to continue?

This is not about the Second Amendment: The right to bear arms.

This is about the right to kill at will.

This is about a country that is OK with the right to be violent.

This is about a country whose people accept the use of war weapons in every venue, from a college campus to an elementary school to a movie theatre and now to the village square.

This is about our culture being OK with the belief that it is OK for our neighbors, any of us, to kill people when we are scared, when we say we are threatened, when we feel trespassed upon.

We have collectively agreed that there is an individual right at any time to kill to defend ourselves. We agree that we can kill first and then make a case for the action. And that having 23 rifles is OK.

This national tragedy is our story, a local story, too. It is who we are as a people. We can’t say it can’t happen here.

The scariest, truest, factual statement is: It just hasn’t happened in La Conner, yet.

And this is also true: Our children are watching. They are learning from us. They are drawing their own conclusions.

What are we going to do so they grow up in a safe society?