It’s near daybreak. A man walks out of his doorway. Walks steadily down to his garage. Takes out his car. Opens the trunk. Loads a gun. Drives through the country into the town. Past several small shops. Parks on the side of a road. Opens his trunk, takes out the gun. Walks with it. Days later, he’d be called insane. Of course, who in their right mind would do such a thing? A door swings open. Bullets fly. Glass shatters. Just another day in America.

Perhaps he carries a Glock, kills five people, leaves a Representative irreparably damaged, fighting for her life.

Perhaps he carries an AR-15 assault rifle, fires into a crowd, entertained by a masked vigilante.

Perhaps he carries a Remington 860 shot gun, shoots up a church (even in the “Dark Ages”, churches were exempt from most violence).

Perhaps he carries a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle, goes on to shoot twenty first-graders to their deaths.
It won’t really matter. In months that will come, all these details will fade from public consciousness, and we will leave behind those who lost it all to despair all alone. But what did you expect: we are the ADD generation. But does that really excuse the apathy?

In the moments after, we get 24-hour media coverage. The killers name is on the tip of our tongue. The President arrives, delivers a beautiful elegy. In the moments after the incident, a massive furor awakens. A sleeping beast awakens and calls for progressive action. But tell me in the months following where is this behemoth of public support? Where is the histrionic outpouring of emotion, despair, and desire for change? In the moments after the incident, the evanescent images of the dead pass by. We hail them as martyrs. Alas, martyrs for a lost cause. There is the young boy, the kid who always only wanted to play football. Slain in his youth. There is the young girl, who after months of deliberation with her mother, wore her pink dress and boots to school, only to have them forever stained with the blood of her fallen classmates. There is the Canadian girl who loved school. Cut down in her sapling days. They make up the fodder for our dinner table conversations. For the next few days. Who amongst you remembers them today?

In the days after the incident self-styled “liberals” and “conservatives” spew pointless hatred towards each other. But in this dialogue, one between zealots on each side of the aisle, we lose the palpable human touch of the tragedy. We lose our connection with the victims. But deep down inside, whatever our ideology may be, we fear for ourselves. The mother who realizes that she will never be able to take her daughter to the movie theater without the fear of spraying bullets. The grandfather who realizes that he will never be able to take his grandchildren to Sunday mass, without the images of shrapnel piercing bone. The father who as, he watches in the rearview mirror in the carpool lot, realizes that his son may not make it out of school alive.

And the muted discourse that takes place in the moments after such tragedies becomes, so characterized by black and white categorizations that essential details are completely omitted. The discourse neglects the massive public health issue that guns present; in 2010, over 19 thousand people committed suicide by shooting themselves . These facts are neglected because they aren’t politically expedient. But they shouldn’t be. Because these are lives. Human lives.

In many cases, those who try to speak are silenced by references to the United States Constitution. There are those who believe that this discourse is seditious to the foundations of this great nation. There are those who believe that this discourse degrades the fabric of American freedom. This nation was founded on the free discussion and dispersal of ideas. In reality, interest group such as the National Rifle Association are using the Constitution as a front to stifle the national dialogue about gun control. Yet, perhaps the most un-American thing is to suppress dialogue. Until we talk, we are a nation that cannot get past our demons. Until we talk, we cannot ensure that those who died did not die in vain. Until we can talk, we cannot act. And until then, we’ll remain one nation, under the gun.