Dialogue to Protect our Youth

Especially in Educational Spaces

Photo by steve woods on Unsplash

For my eleventh birthday my father surprised me by giving me a 20-gauge shotgun. He taught me how to shoot, how to clean it, and even how to make my own shells. I shot clay pigeons in the backyard that he would toss up, and he once took me hunting with him. I intentionally missed the black squirrel he told me to shoot. I had a blast with the gun and I respected it, too. Like many, I am not against guns.

According to the Washington Post, 157 children, educators and other people have been killed in assaults on school campuses since the Columbine shooting in 1999, while another 351 have been injured. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/school-shootings-database/) Yet another school shooting occurred in Oxford, Michigan on November 30, 2021, killing four students and wounding seven others. Our educational spaces have been corrupted by these terror-inducing, unimaginable, all too regular occurrences.

Gun control is an issue being hotly debated. Like a majority of disputed issues, once common ground can be established between two sides, then dialogue and ultimately a healthier compromise can be achieved. Currently, one side believes guns are a right and this right should not be usurped by the state. They believe guns do not kill, people do, and that the constitution guarantees a fundamental right to gun ownership for its citizens.

The other side believes guns are inherently dangerous. A lethal weapon close at hand is too much temptation for those who make poor choices, especially impulsive ones. Accidents also happen. We have had slaughters of innocent lives because guns have found a way into the hands of people who make very poor choices. Video games are blamed, parents are blamed, mental illness is blamed, guns are blamed, and society as a whole is blamed. People want gun control to lessen these kinds of incidents as well as accidents. We have weapons that can kill many with a simple pull of the trigger – some people who resist gun control do not even want these weapons restricted. They fear the loss of the right to own a gun plus the loss of their actual guns.

What common ground can both agree on? Requiring a background check on every gun sale? Increased funding of mental health programs? Agreeing to dialogue? Or even the common ground that a child should feel safe inside his/her classroom.

The purpose of a weapon is either for protection or for destruction of life. If we have no fear, we have no need of protection. However, we have created and live in a world of fear. It is a frightening time as home-grown militias stockpile weapons and guns that only a couple of generations ago were used to provide food for one’s family have now only one purpose, to kill, and kill ever more efficiently. Whether to kill in self-defense or to kill another aggressively often depends on one’s perspective. One may feel he/she/they are defending themselves when in reality, they are the aggressor.

The only thing that seems to come from debate is that both sides strengthen their position. To achieve agreement, there must be a softening of lines that create sides. Dialogue is a good alternative to debate. It is important to continue the dialogue and to come to the table open to another’s perspective and concerns and to address them. However, before or in conjunction with dialogue, one may also work on oneself, examining one’s own clung to perspectives and concerns and addressing one’s own attachments.

People worry that when or if they lay down their weapons, others may not – and those others are ones still to fear. So, it seems to me, to come down to one’s relationship with the Eternal, trusting in the Eternal One, letting go of fear, and understanding to one’s core that this life, this material existence is not the end, but just a beginning. This is easy to write, but not easy to live, especially if there is a threat (perceived or very real) to one’s loved ones. Along with dialogue, include the healing of ourselves, versus the desire of controlling or not controlling another.

What is one of our greatest fears? Death. Whether we are afraid of death or thinking of death or welcoming death, it is nothing but the stripping off of the body. We put too much focus and so much of ourselves into avoiding or keeping at a distance or escaping what is inevitable in our world. The excruciating pain of losing a loved one, especially one too soon (and aren’t they all too soon) is what we often fear more than our own demise. So, the concept of placing our trust in the Eternal is easy to write, but oh so hard to live.

One who lives united with God does not think, fear, worry, or even welcome death – they merely accept it as a part of life for oneself and one’s loved ones. But death is not the end, only a transition, and whether one is living in this world, transitioning, or onto the next, one is in perfect union with the Divine Love – only that has any meaning. We need not cling to the Divine to feel safe or to believe we are safe or even to know we are safe, because there is no such thing as safe or in jeopardy. By living within the Divine there is absolutely no fear and nothing to fear – not death, not life, not light, not darkness, not love, not hate, not even one another.

I beg both sides to come to the table... for the sake of our children.