Insomnia

Last night I laid awake for hours.  It was the usual thing, me convincing myself that someone would throw open the door at any moment and open fire on my husband and me.  The bedroom door rattled with the wind and I huddled, sweating, under our hefty down comforter, sick with fear.  As I've said many times before, I've been having these restless, fright-filled nights for decades, not every night but often enough that it's not that notable.  And it's always been the same fear -- the burglar, the gun, the violent death.  I'll probably never know why my anxieties manifest themselves in this way -- is it a premonition of how I'll die?  Is it a reverberation from some past life (or death, really)?  Is it because I used to watch "Murder, She Wrote" with my mom sometimes? 

This time, of course, there was an easily discernible cause for my panic.  Monday was a reminder that, even when we feel the safest, our security, and our very lives, can be shattered in an instant.  I have absolutely nothing original to add to what the rest of the world has said in the past couple of days, but I feel like I have to say something.  In fact, I wish I could *do* something.  If I'd become a mental health professional as I intended to when I left home for college, I could go down to the campus and provide free counseling to anyone who needed it.  If I were involved with a church, I could get a group together to drive to Virginia and minister to the wounded and the bereaved.  Instead, as a lawyer, I'm a useless corporate drone with nothing to offer except my thoughts and prayers.  It doesn't seem like enough.

Well, there is something I can do, although I am sure it will come to nothing:  I can loudly advocate for gun control laws.  Better yet, I can urge Congress to repeal the Second Amendment.  I absolutely believe that no one in this country needs to own a gun outside of law enforcement and the military.  No one.  The right to life should trump any antiquated notion that we, as private citizens, may need to defend our country on a moment's notice.  Which, of course, we never will.  And to counter a couple more stock pro-gun arguments, we don't need people hunting (it's not like we have to shoot our food to survive), and we don't need people defending their property rights with bullets.  We simply don't need guns in the hands of anyone who wants them.  Or anyone at all, period. 

At bare minimum, since this country would probably overthrow any administration that dared interfere with its perceived God-given right to bear arms (grf), we have to do better with gun control.  Asking to see a few forms of ID and doing a basic criminal background check isn't enough of a hurdle to people who (legally) buy guns -- to say nothing of the scores of guns that are illegally bought and sold.  How exactly does a criminal background check assure that the guns being purchased won't be used for criminal purposes?  And why must we allow not just access to any old guns, but access to handguns and semiautomatic weapons?  You don't need a Glock or an Uzi to shoot a deer, after all. 

It just doesn't make sense to me, that we make it so easy to purchase something whose sole purpose is to take away life (and yet a large segment of society wants to make it more difficult for women to get abortions -- funny, that). 

I could go on for days, but I realize this isn't the most cogent discourse on gun control and there's so much more to say about the whole thing, so I'll just shut up now.  I should probably just stick to writing about "The Bachelor" and people who annoy me on the subway and leave the social commentary to people who do a better job of it.  But I do intend to take some action, or at least write some strongly worded letters.  Take it up with my Congressman and anyone else who will listen.  Maybe making my voice heard will help me sleep at night.        

Comments

[orangepeacock]

God. I go to George Mason University and have lived in this state my whole life - almost everyone I knew from high school goes to Tech. I spent all of yesterday with practically everyone else (Mason's not a "great" school, so almost everyone is a)in-state or b)international), huddled around waiting to hear from friends and waiting for The List to be made public. Our parents kept calling to update us on whose kids they'd heard from, to hear if we'd heard from anyone. It was sickening and terrifying. Thank God nobody I knew was hurt as far as I know right now, but I can't get over how awful it must be for the friends and families whose students are never going on another spring break or going for another walk across campus. We kept vigil last night for them here.

It's so, so, so sad, and it's been an extremely long week already.

[jonniker]

I'm really mixed on gun control/gun laws. Truly, I see both sides, and I don't have a coherent enough understanding to really comprehend what the best decision is.

That being said, like everyone else, I'm disgusted, saddened and horrified by the whole thing.

I will say, as I said to you earlier, that I really dislike the tone that many are taking, as if the entire country and college campuses are under some sort of siege on any given day. They're not. Horrible, terrible things happen, and it's terrifying to think it could happen at any time, but I really have a strong aversion to whipping up the masses, as though an army of student gunmen are waiting in the wings, ready to strike at any time.

[orangepeacock]

Man, sorry to hog the comments area, but WRT jonna's comment - it bugs me too, especially given that now I'm in that body of people who could be looked at with suspicion. I'm a columnist for our paper and I am actually working on an editorial for the next edition about the potential for mass panic/fear/desire for revenge and what the ramifications could be.

That being said, I really hope you got some sleep, Lawyerish. I didn't. Stupid bogeymen.

[Lawyerish]

OP, I'm so relieved to hear that everyone in your life is safe. I wish I'd had a vigil to attend or something -- although I guess I've been keeping one-woman vigils being up all night.

Jonna -- Last night as I was laying awake, I thought of about 37 exceptions to my hard-line no guns rule, so admittedly I don't have the most well-developed solution to the problem. But I do know I am staunchly anti-gun and pro-gun control.

That said, awful things will happen no matter what, and we can't hide from danger forever (although less guns? would certainly help decrease the risk of this sort of violence), and I certainly agree that we can't go into mass panic about the safety of all college campuses. They remain generally safe places, although it can't hurt for schools to develop clear policies and methods for contacting students in the event of any kind of campus-wide emergency.

Also, there are now these sickos coming out of the woodwork to make bomb threats and whatnot at schools across the country, which just makes me shake my head.

[Jamie]

When we can employ some sort of stupidity test to weed out idiots who shouldn't have guns, then I will stop being pro-gun-control.

I think I looked at my front door three times before going to bed last night - this event has just rattled the hell out of me.

[CPA Mom]

I'm not sure where I am on the gun control issue either. I actually own two guns and have thought long and hard about getting rid of them until I have a night like you describe.

As far as doing something, they have set up a dedicted fund at the United Way. I wrote about it today on my blog. It is little, but it is something.

[Mauigirl52]

I am a little wary of only having law-enforcement officers have guns when I remember the scene in my local Irish bar on St. Patrick's Day, of not just one, but TWO cops, WITH guns, drinking their brains out and obviously three sheets to the wind.

But there should be way more oversight as to who owns a gun. Apparently from what I heard on the radio the background check they do precludes people from owning a gun who have been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital in the past. What about those, like Cho, who were involuntarily sent by the police to therapy because they thought he was so crazy? Just because he was treated as an outpatient (as most are nowadays due to the lack of funding for mental hospitals) shouldn't have meant he was fine to own a gun. This is the kind of thing we need to have much stricter control over. And handguns, particularly automatics, should be very rarely allowed. A shotgun should work just fine for anyone who needs to shoot a rabbit (yes, in the south and midwest they do this, I understand) or feel they need some self-protection if they live in a lonely rural place. But this entire assault weapon and handgun culture needs to stop.