Category Archives: Gun violence

After the Battle

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

Surviving war does not equate to a free ticket home.

COVID-19 is like a world war with every country fighting unique battles to beat a largely invisible enemy. When a vaccine is ready, how will wearied populations move forward? How will first responders and all on the front lines find their equilibrium? Where will we mourn our dead?

A good number of the 40 Thieves on Saipan WWII platoon survivors re-enlisted for the Korean conflict. They had seen too much, experienced too much, to return to the family dinner table. For the rest of their lives, many fought the bloody Pacific Theater battles of their youth. Between 1.4 and 1.5 million World War II vets fought in Korea. My father was one of those.

Some WWI and WWII vets disappeared after finding home side re-integration in the United States too difficult. My father-in-law was one of those. Without credit cards and mobile phones, pulling up roots in the 1950s was far easier. The  women they left behind were granted the dignity of being known ‘war widows’ even if somewhere their legal spouse was alive.

Mental health issues have dogged veterans as long as men have waged war. Some WWII and Vietnam vets who had suffered as prisoners of war returned home able to rehabilitate. Others did the best they could. I worked with a well-functioning man who chose to remove his shoes and eat his lunch under his desk. He had spent months in a Russian prisoner camp and carried this vulnerability to the work world.

Hit with the double whammy of COVID-19 and economic tsunami, not all of us will have the tenacity to start over. Suicide rates in the United States have risen dramatically since the start of the millennium, particularly among white middle age men. Vietnam and Afghanistan vets are dying at their own hand daily.

The world will not be a friendlier place in 2021, so where will we find ourselves? In a New York Times op ed David Brooks writes about the US tide of “safetyism” that buffers children and young people from disappointment, from accidents of any size, from developing tenacity. He says that tenacity is not a feature of good character, but what people are trained to do. One of our first challenges will be to find tenacious leaders in families, communities, schools, corporations and government and ask them to help everyone to build the skill set. And to build supports for those who are struck with hesitancy or fear on the journey to our new world.

Surviving this virus war will be a different kind of battle. Stay home. Stay safe.

 

This is Our War

Cynthia Kraack Posted on by

Forty thousand people die from guns every year in the United States. Hundreds of thousands are injured. Sit back and consider those numbers then multiply each by ten to acknowledge family and friends traumatized by the violence.  Forty thousand domestic casualties in twelve months is more than all the Armed Forces casualties since President George Bush’s Desert Storm operation. While the loss of any US service person is tragic,  people back home don’t expect to make the ultimate sacrifice when shopping for their kids’ back to school supplies or worshiping on a Sunday morning or hiking in a national forest.

If the increasing numbers of mass shootings, domestic killings, urban murders, accidental tragedies, or individuals using a gun to end their lives were happening elsewhere, we might suggest these were signs of war. There might a call to send troops and support civilians dying in the cross fire.

Instead we work and raise our children and care for those more vulnerable in communities we can only hope are safe that day. Our elected leaders accept money from the ever powerful lobbyists of the gun world. Because too many politicians like the money and power, there is denial that a domestic war exists.

You and I can never raise the money these politicians–both men and women–require to change their minds or rhetoric about assault rifles. My brother and uncles never needed military grade firearms to hunt grouse or deer. There are an estimated fifteen million military-style rifles in civilian hands. Mass shootings are difficult to accept as part of the price of protecting some individuals’ personal freedom to own what they want.

There is another statistic that is difficult to accept–about sixty percent of gun-related deaths are suicides. Stop and consider the heaviness of that fact. Significant experts tie the flood of illegal drugs including opioids with the astounding number of guns in our country to violence and rising suicide numbers.

Some say it is too late to work our way out of this gun tsunami. Giving up on a safer future for our children and grandchildren because of facing difficult decisions and an angry minority today doesn’t feel American. It feels reasonable if a person wants a traditional rifle or handgun and can prove they have received valid training in safe handling of that weapon. That was how the US once lived. A country where people can own multiple weapons capable of mass shootings and stockpiled ammunition sounds like a nation where the body count will continue to rise. A country engaged in a passive aggressive sort of domestic war.