Frequently in this space I sing little satirical songs about something in the news. Today, I don’t have a song.
I can’t find words that rhyme with “carnage” and with “tragedy.” Even if such rhymes did exist, there’s just not a melody somber enough to convey the way I feel about gun violence.
I could take the tact of writing a song that ridicules those who are adamantly against gun restrictions. But I don’t have much stomach for hurling insults on this issue. When the opposition believes more violence is the answer, it kills my willingness to fling insults at them. That feels like buying into their mentality.
I have a theory as to how effective gun laws will finally be passed in America. It has nothing to do with graphic news reports about mass shootings. If America cannot find the will to change its course after the incomprehensible horror of 20 tiny children being gun-slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary School, there is no hope that death-scene descriptions will change us.
Even statistics like this one don’t seem to affect us: From 1989 until 2014 (that’s 25 years) 836,290 Americans died from gun violence. That’s more deaths than we suffered in all the wars fought since 1776.
My fear is that the only thing that will change our hearts and minds is having a loved one killed by gun violence. Only when enough of us have had that personal tragedy to deal with, will we find the courage to stand up and say, “enough!” There is no song I could sing grim enough to express that morbid reality.
Change apparently must come, one funeral dirge at a time.
