Newtown families: Victims turn lobbyists
What started as a support group is now a lobbying force unlike any other to descend on Capitol Hill. The family members typically begin their pitch to senators softly, telling the story of the child that they lost. They gently say they could not have imagined themselves in this position, but they’re doing it to honor the memory of their children. They say they’re supporters of the Second Amendment, and just want to have a conversation.
Look, I’m a parent. I know enough about the anxieties of parenthood not to even imagine I know the pain some of these people have gone through. They have my deepest sympathy, they really do. But I didn’t do it, and I don’t consent to suffer so they’ll feel more validated.
End of message.
I’ll go a little farther. These people are losing my sympathy.
I didn’t do it.
The laws you are pushing would not have applied to Lanza’s murders and theft.
Those laws won’t apply to the next murderous lunatic (Haynes decision).
Those laws won’t stop another killing.
Those laws DO violate the human rights of people who had nothing to do with your children’s murders.
So stop dancing in your own child’s blood to screw people who didn’t do it.
The best I can say for the Newtown parents pushing victim disarmament is that they’re unthinkingly irrational, easily manipulated, and willing to dishonor their children’s memory.
Yeah, the tiresome “I suffered, so screw everyone who didn’t do it” lobbying tactic got my attention a coupla months ago. I tried to put it politely:
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The article attributes to Heslin the following statement: “We’re all entitled to our own opinions and I respect their opinions and their thoughts. But I wish they’d respect min[e] and give it a little bit of thought.”
It’s rather hard to see Heslin’s “respect” of others’ opinions and thoughts, truly. Peaceable people wanting nothing more than to be left unviolated, and he pushing to legally sanction their prior restraint violation not only without their consent, but against their vocal opposition. This is moral authority?
And the “give it a little bit of thought” condescension is rather insulting to a whole lot of people who have quite carefully considered this sort of scenario, in advance, for years, even generations, and come to a very different conclusion than he has in his own six weeks of examination after the fact.
I take nothing–nothing–away from a grieving parent who has lost a child. It’s even unsurprising that in response to a tragedy of that magnitude, such a parent might be persuaded of things that they would not otherwise be persuaded of. If that person’s desire is to grieve privately and in peace, I would be among those who would show up to provide a living wall against hecklers, activists and demonstrators, even if I were 100% against his private beliefs.
Or, if he instead was genuinely curious about how others could look at the same history and arrive at a completely different conclusion than he does, in the interest of understanding the problem more completely and wanting to make double-sure that he does not lend his voice to something that sounds good and markets well but which may simply guarantee another horrible result in the future, he would find in me a willing, patient voice. This would be what I always understood to be a “conversation”.
But simply to use one’s own tragic celebrity as a weapon of aggression against peaceable others, using “law” and the legislative-enforcement apparatus of the state as one’s own personal heavy to do it…sorry, there’s nothing that cancels out moral authority faster than that.
Law is not absolution, Mr. Heslin. It did not protect your son from the person who took his life, it cannot bring your son back, and that will never change by adding more of it.
We should never confuse grief with vengeance, lest we confer a very dangerous moral authority upon the latter.
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But these people seem willing neither to listen, nor to stop–what with their iron-clad moral authority and all…
Gah. Sorry about the mega-link there. Not sure why it didn’t see my closing tag.
I buried a child… so I have a great deal of sympathy for their pain and loss. But you have it exactly right, Kevin.