Pain and Policy

I have lost no loved one to crime.

I doubt that I would know better what to do about crime if I had. I am human. To lose a loved one to a criminal act would rob me of my objectivity. I would want revenge. I would want to see the perpetrator caught, tried, and convicted; and I would want to see the needle go into his vein; and after that I would want to see his ribs stop the rise and fall that keeps him alive.

And I would want some prevention-measure made into law. Maybe I would want that law named after my loved one.

1.  Loss comes.

Speaking objectively, and not as a victim of crime might, I know that in this world, violence and hurt will come. In this world, people will die when they shouldn’t, and lives will be ruined that deserve to prosper.

But sometimes an event will shock so deeply that it spikes the urgent desire to make sure that the shocking event never happens again. It makes us turn against the tide of inevitable pain.

The tragedy in of Aurora, Colorado is such an event. But even that event is an ripple compared to 9/11.

2. The sky will fall, or parts of it.

The will to keep the sky from falling is human. And a piece of the sky has fallen in Aurora, Colorado. And it has fallen on some disproportionately.

But there are a lot of us, and there is a lot of sky. Were we to build a scaffold between us and the sky that was heavy and wide and strong enough forever to preserve the safety of everyone underneath it from the hard fall of pieces of the heavens, we would never again see stars or sunlight.

3. The American habit of overreaction.

The inevitability of pain does not daunt us from taking action, some of it to ill effect. Let’s look at 9/11. Some measures taken after it were right. Among my friends, only one was upset that Osama bin Laden does not walk among the living. And I suspect that his contrariness was more partisan than moral.

But the urge to do something also led us into a costly adventure in Iraq – costly in blood and in treasure and in geopolitical standing. Our sacrifices there seem mainly to have benefitted Iran.

And, domestically, hatred against Muslims has boiled so that many of us are willing to scald our founding document and curtail the freedom of American Muslims to spread and worship in peace.

It’s possible to learn too much from experience.

This is not a new thing. Overreaction is as American as muzzle-loaded muskets. Fans of Hunter S. Thompson know this. There was an alleged sexual assault by a motorcycle gang in – I think it was the late 50s or early 60s. Hunter S. Thompson wrote about it in Hells Angels. Having received no traffic tickets for years, after the supposed sexual assault he started to ride a motorcycle. He wore a sheepskin jacket, which no self-respecting motorcycle gang-member would ever wear. He soon had enough tickets to put his driver’s license in danger.

4. What we can learn.

So it's possible to overreact. But not everything is an overreaction. A pause to reflect on the impermanence of life is never inappropriate. Americans particularly benefit from a reminder that just because we cannot remember ever not living, that does not mean that our lives in this world will go on without end.

And some of my friends have been moved to pray, particularly for the victims of the Aurora shooting and their families. Good.

Aside from that, maybe the best thing to do is nothing. At least for a time.

5. Rapid-response overreaction.

But some take Aurora as an immediate call to action, predictably. I read the New York Times. Two editorials within hours of the tragic event in Colorado called for stronger gun control. This might be an overreaction akin the more retrograde parts of the Patriot Act, enacted in the aftershock of 9/11.

The Patriot Act and the call for sterner gun control grew out of the impulse that, after a true tragedy, something must be done. And both the Patriot Act and the proposed clamp-down on guns are, in fact, "something".

6. The unspoken fallacy that any solution is good.

Sometimes the "something" that needs to be done is not new legislation. Pain is a part of the process of life, and no effort, no law, will eliminate it entirely. And some laws may only fruitlessly burden the freedoms of persons in numbers far greater than those stricken by the tragedy that spawned the law.

So we need to sit still for a time. We need to mourn with those who mourn in Colorado, and with the thousands of victim of crimes without fame across the country day by day.

And we need to think hard. We need to count the costs of any measure meant to beat back the pain that wants to enter into our lives. And we need to make a cold, hard choice about whether we are willing to live with those costs over the long run. Only time can give us the objectivity not to overreact. So we need to take time before we give serious thought to any new measure.

7. Bearing pain.

And, this sounds hard. But we need to be prepared to bear pain. Great evil is done in the name of staving off pain; and great good can comes from taking it on. For example, the miracle of forgiveness is the boon made possible by a willingness to take hurt and to forego the salve of sending it back to where we suppose it came from.

8.  Action in the right time.

And, maybe, in the right time, we’ll take action. But the right action is likely to come only at the right time. An with considered and dispassionate thoughts.

9. Yes, but.

To say that a pause before acting is sound is not to say that we shouldn't revise some of our laws about guns. Some skittishness toward gun regulation is perverse. It's crazy that someone on the terrorist watch list is not impeded from buying a gun. And I don't like laws that allow guns in places where people go to get drunk. To give a couple of examples.

10.  Still.

My call for a pause, my call for calm, might seem cold-blooded. Fine. It is. But I have seen the reckless harm caused by a surge of passion following an event that makes us afraid or angry (two linked emotions). In hindsight, I see that we were not well served by some actions motivated by outrage.

We as a nation need to learn the difference between Pearl Harbor and a shocking event that can be addressed in calmer times. We as a nation need to shed the notion that after a tragedy something must be done, and that any "something" is a good idea.