RE: The Horrific Events in Las Vegas

RE: The Horrific Events in Las Vegas

It was a tragedy, a senseless massacre of innocent people by a Caucasian American man (White male)  with multiple weapons including what reports indicate were legally purchased guns designed for military use that had been modified to fire in a more aggressive fashion. According to accounts, several individuals involved with the musical performance were armed, legally concealed carrying. Given the nature of the public event, there were a number of armed law enforcement officers present as well. General public labeled “good guys” with guns did not stop this assault, and neither did any laws on the books or stricken from the books.

I’ve never had a history professor in any of my departments who were and are not aware of massacres on US soil that saw more casualties. Even if the courses we teach do not pertain to the time frames or subject areas that include for example the Lakota Indians at Wounded Knee on 29 December 1890 or the black men and women in Colfax, LA, on Easter Sunday, 13 April 1873, we know of these horrific events.

Heck, right now people in the general public and politicians are still arguing about the removal of the Battle of Liberty Place monument which is the marker for approximately 35 deaths on 14 September 1874. How is that relevant some ask? It was the same white supremacists’ groups who killed approximately 150 black men and women in Colfax up in Grant Parish on Easter Sunday the previous year who carried out the attack on Liberty Place in New Orleans. The monument first erected in 1891 to “honor” this event had an inscription advocating white supremacy added in the year 1932.

I and I assume most people are aware that even more people were murdered on our soil on the morning of Tuesday, 11 September 2001 without a single shot from a gun being fired.

These deaths are not the price of freedom as one well-heeled media personality is spewing. They are not “understandable” or “acceptable” losses as another well-heeled perpetrator of hate beneath a cloak of religious love contends.

Likewise, these deaths that take place because of violence at mass events are no different from the single lives lost every day on any street, any city, any town, any clod of soil.

WHY? I have too many words but as John Donne articulated: “And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness”  [Meditation XVII].

A senseless death, no matter the cause or place, is a tragedy. It should not be justified or explained away. It need not be our family blood or that of a friend or colleague. It matters not the color of the skin, gender, heritage, for the blood remains red and is the life fluid for us all even when the vessel from which it flows has an external appearance that is ever so different. All are different yet same.

People attempting to justify or dismiss for whatever reason really don’t have a clue and that concerns me because I believe that is part of the problem.