Cleveland Heights jumped up my list of favorite neighborhoods. As I hustled up toward the cathedral I stopped at a light. The on-duty school/traffic/neighborhood officer called out to me, ‘you can go now, ain’t nobody comin’. I smiled, nodded and shuffled through the red light only to need to change directions and cross the intersection with its now-red light. I leaned into the pole, it’d been a mostly uphill quick shuffle the last half-mile and after all I of course, was running late. Cars began to stop–at first I could’t figure out why since they had a green light. Again I heard the friendly officer, ‘you can go, go on now’ as he held up traffic and waved me through the walk. Stunned again–this time I managed to wish him a Merry Christmas. Three blocks later, nearly at my destination I again ran across another overly friendly officer–this time I had a green so no need for a traffic block. Yet he still gave me a nod and smile. For those brief moments I completely forgot about the somber purpose of my trip.
By some reporting another 30,000 people have died (murders plus suicides) at the hand of guns in the U.S. since the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings one year ago. 193 of them children under the age of 12. Stories are at once endless, mindless and senseless.
Walking into the cathedral a coldness overtakes you. In part because of the chill outside, in part because the cavernous main nave must be impossible to heat and in no small part because bells were echoing as they tolled in the memory of the Sandy Hook elementary victims of one year earlier. Sitting down only exaggerated the chill—the chilly chairs pointed directly at a children’s choir serving as yet another reminder of the event. And if all of that wasn’t enough a rope-line ran along the entire distance of the north wall displaying t-shirts in memory of recent gun violence; the most recent I noticed dated November, 24, 2013. A vivid reminder this continues every day. A priest, a rabbi and an imam approached the lectern, each providing thanks and a wish for peace and compassion. After the 10,647 pipes of the great organ began to fill the room images of the youth choir filled each of the large monitors scattered along the rows of chairs. My emotions had almost peaked with the respective clergy’s messages and the relative shrill voices of the youth contrasted with the deep echoes of the organ tipped my scale. I welled up, along with most everyone around, for the duration of the performance and much of the service.
One after another family members of slain victims took the lectern–a father from the Sandy Hook school, a brother from Chicago, a brother from New York City, a mother from D.C, a mother from Thousand Oaks a father from San Diego and a father from Aurora, Colorado. Each of them showing a life-size smiling photo as they provided details around the death and their own plea for peace and action. Drive-by, wrong place-wrong time, ran with rough crowd, completely random. Every different type of scenario. Even a former gang member who had lost someone (cousin) and has been on both sides of the coin. Each linked by a common theme: surviving family member of a gunshot victim. It was not yet the time to put away the tissue.
With a spouse in law enforcement it’d be hypocritical to call for the end of firearms—they have their place. However, with nearly 90 guns per 100 citizens and a death-by-firearm rate of nearly three times that of the closest runner-up among developed nations its clear the U.S. is doing something wrong. And doing more of the same thing will not help the epidemic–that is, responding to every incident with a loud cry to arm even more people. I do wonder if those who make that cry believe any part of it or if it’s been the drumbeat among their deep-pocket supporters for so long they’re completely numb to their own words. Perhaps most moving was Eleanor Holmes-Norton. After traveling cross-planet to attend the funeral of Nelson Mandela—Congresswoman Holmes-Norton was back in The District delivering both an impassioned plea to be persistent and several examples of why the persistence of this movement will ultimately win.
I live in an area with 6.8 million people; probably 500 in my own building and several thousand within a few square blocks. And the answer is to have all of us load up for protection? From what? From whom? Our society really believes–really believes–that the solution to the <1% of really bad-guys in my urban area is to load us up with (based on current possession rates) 5.98 million firearms? In this urban area? That's the best we can do? One, of many, trade-offs would be the accidental death of thousands of my 6.8 million neighbors. That’s what we want. That’s our solution. According to those who scream the loudest, it is.
As the cathedral lights were raised, signaling the end of the service and the extinction of our candles we slowly filed out into the chilly December darkness. This darkness paled in comparison, however, to that felt by the six families who had someone taken from them by gunfire in the two hours we were in the cathedral.
We can do better than this.