~ An Artist Statement Of Sorts ~
I set aside my gun violence project for about 3 months. Every time I thought of it, I felt anxious. I thought it was just me feeling guilty for not finishing something I promised myself I would finish. I finally returned to it after the Orlando Nightclub massacre and witnessing again the monotonous repetition of our law makers failing to pass ANY gun legislation. Yet again, no useful law was passed, no worthless law, not even a questionable one, and most certainly not a meaningful one.
Barely into the 3-month backlog of data, I realized the real reasons for avoiding my project: This stuff is horrific, it’s heartbreaking, it’s maddening. It is the same every month. Child shoots self, child shoots child. Children are often the innocent bystanders of the violent indiscriminate bloodshed scattered daily by stray bullets. I felt compelled but reluctant to revisit my project.
Then, like the repetitive din of cable news, came the killing of more black men by police, again caught on video, and now, a new thing, the death of a beloved school lunch man, soul-shockingly, live-streamed on Facebook. More quickly than anyone can catch their breath, comes the horrific spectacle of the revenge killings, the gunning down of scapegoated Dallas police officers on live television.
In the aftermath of these tragedies, I listened to Dallas police chief David Brown speak, I thought, we can get through this, as a nation. Yes, we can get through this. When I heard the LT. Governor of Texas speaking on Fox news, I thought: No, we can’t. When I saw Mark Fuhrman being touted as a law enforcement “expert” on Meagan Kelly’s show, I was stunned. Wait, the same guy who shit-showed the O.J. Simpson trial with his racist racism? The same Mark Fuhrman who was born in the town where I currently live? In Eatonville, just a month ago, a high school student’s red pick up strangely taunted passerby with it’s giant confederate flag and the words, “SUPER CRACKER” emblazoned across it’s windshield. It arrived each school day, unchallenged and unopposed for weeks, a glaringly proud reminder of a hateful, repressive history. There is not much evolution here in Eatonville, people don’t believe in it. I thought of the handful of black students that attend the high school and wondered how this display made them feel? I wondered why white people didn’t stand up and say anything.
But, I am getting distracted. My data, the focus of my project is, American children, all under the age of eleven, all victims of gun violence. Nobody can argue the wrongness of children being shot. It matters not if they are black children, white children, or latino children. Race matters not one bit. There can be no disagreement on this. These are the children of America and it is our collective job to care for them and about them irrespective of the color of their skin. They are in no way culpable for shooting themselves or others. They are NOT culpable for being shot. Nobody, not anybody, can argue that they are.
And it’s not that my “project” is so important, or that my “project” will be noticed. My “project” will change nothing. It is my own way of working through my grief, thoughts, and beliefs about guns, gun violence and contemplating what the Hell is going on. It is how I keep sane in the midst of insanity, so I thought.
But when you read about a man who shoots and kills his eight-month-old baby while aiming for the baby’s mother, it takes a toll on your psyche. You don’t feel more sane. You feel rattled. What is it with humanity, you wonder? And then you wonder about the people who touch this scene in real life. The mother. The neighbors. The emergency workers. The cops who are usually the first to come upon unspeakable scenes. How does this effect all of the people who touch this depravity?
When you read about a 3-year-old being shot because an angry man fired into a car after his flirtations were rebuffed by the child’s mother, you just have to shake your head and say, “What the fuck?” out loud. You say it out loud, regardless of who is in the room, because you mean it. It has the elements of your own push-buttons: elements of the “entitled man” and the “lesser woman” who deserves punishment. And with the added element of a female child being shot, you can feel your adrenaline, although you have never seen nor met any of the people involved. You don’t feel more sane. You know that this violence changes who people are.
You wonder who keeps an AR-15 hidden in couch cushions? How does that even work? And, of course, it’s a loaded AR-15, just to top off the crazy. You feel for the 10 year-old girl who accidentally shot her 9 year-old friend when looking for a game controller. You feel for the cops who are called to respond yet again to insane, unnecessary and completely avoidable carnage. You think of the shooter’s classmates and the classmates of the “victim”. You must put “victim” in quotes because both children are victims but to call them both “victims” would confuse things. How many times, so far in their young lives, have these kids been confronted with gun violence?
There have been several incidents this year where young children have been shot with bb guns or pellet guns as a form of punishment by a parent, step-parent or guardian. You wonder how the doctor, whose job it is to dig pellets from the tiny, still-growing hands, feels about this. It is something that gums up and sticks to the soul, I’d bet. It is the kind of thing that changes who people are, it changes everyone who touches it.
In May of this year, a 3-year-old boy was shot with a 9mm pistol, killed for jumping on the bed. This happened in America? But several months of data have shown, this is America. We wonder why some cops might be jittery, or “trigger-happy”, or seemingly hateful. We despise them when they act more violently than seems necessary or appropriate. Are their actions driven by hate, racism, fear or anxiety? I think it can not be an either/or kind-of-thing but a much more complicated and systemic kind-of-thing. i am sure different communities and police departments, and individual cops would have different questions and different answers. But something to which we all might agree: witnessing evil can profoundly change who you are and what you believe.
On May 27, 2016 a 13- year-old shot and killed a 10-year-old. This happens often, kids come across a loaded gun and accidentally shoot themselves or someone else. But this time the shooting was not an accident. It isn’t difficult to figure out why a child may have thought this was a reasonable thing to do. He lives in America, after all, and in America, adults gun each other down, every fucking day.
So, to all the gun nuts and the NRA zealots, stop saying, “The 2nd Amendment,” as if that is all you need to say. That is no longer an acceptable answer, reason, rebuttal for why EVERYONE in America needs to be armed. That isn’t good enough. We can no longer allow EVERYONE to own a gun. We see people everyday, proving without a doubt, that they cannot handle the responsibility of “The 2nd Amendment”. And please, stop with the snarky “Which part do you not understand?” I will tell you, 600 children are shot in America each year. The shame is on all of us. Somehow we have allowed the right of gun ownership to be valued more than our right to humanity and in doing so have tragically let gun violence change who we are as individuals and as a nation. Now, you tell me, which part of that do you not understand?”