Question of the Month: What Are We to Make of the Las Vegas Massacre?

I am still in deep meditations of this tragedy, but my initial reaction takes me back in time.

I remember writing in my journal soon after Tariq passed away: “There is nothing quite so painful as a broken heart, but a broken heart is an open heart. If one can learn to live with an open heart, gentle transformations begin to manifest.”

There are many broken hearts in the Las Vegas tragedy, and I think these words by Rev. Donna Johnson, President and CEO of Unity Worldwide Ministries, capture my sentiments: “Our hearts grieve with those directly impacted by this massacre, and our hearts also grieve at the thought that our collective safety … once a given staple of American civility … can be robbed from us by anyone, anywhere, at any given time without warning. Words cannot express the initial helplessness and utter vulnerability we may feel; yet, we are far from being helpless victims.”

The victims and their families have been in my daily prayers and mediations, trusting that the good Lord rest the departed souls in eternal peace and provides strength to their families to move forward in the absence of their loved ones and, if at all possible, to do so with an open heart.

While I get that the loss of loved ones is devastatingly painful, we must approach this tragedy with an open heart – as an open heart can send out empathy, compassion, forgiveness and love more freely, and this can promote healing.

We must also question our role in having created a society where these types of tragedies are becoming common practice. The offenders in many cases are often suffering victims of unthinkable abuse, hurt, anger and radicalization. Many need mental health support, which President Ronald Regan curtailed decades ago, when most mental health institutes and hospitals were providing substandard treatment and did not find an adequate replacement of effective therapies and remedies. As I do not believe that mental health was the true reason for the Las Vegas tragedy (an investigation still in progress), we must not hide behind that excuse in other similar incidents. My belief is that easy access to weapons – especially automatic weapons – might be the real culprit.

The easy access to automatic weapons that can spit out upwards of 30 bullets per second may be the enigma. The Las Vegas offender had an arsenal of weapons – WHY? We are not on a front line of a war zone. These weapons need to be outlawed and sensible gun control needs to be adopted and done so quickly. We have over 300 million guns in our country with a population of around 323 million, twice the amount of guns per capita since 1968. It’s frightening to learn that guns sales and ownership are on the increase!

As caring and responsible citizens, it is our obligation and responsibility to take on these issues as a priority. As eloquently said by Reverent Johnson – return our beloved country to “once a given staple of American civility.”

If enough care about this, I believe it is achievable!