In the aftermath of the January 8th 2011 shooting in Tucson Arizona, the political talking heads came out pointing fingers at the opposite side of the Congressional isle. They insinuated blame to each other for the atrocity. What they did not do is to take responsibility. What did I say, take responsibility for a crazy shooter guy actions? Yes, I said take responsibility, but not for the shooter's actions but for the circumstances of that day. Ike famously said "the buck stops here" referring to himself as President of the United States. He took responsibility. In this case the buck really stops with the boss of the President, the People. We are the People. We need to take responsibility. We the People should take responsibility for the circumstances that brought about the shootings in Tucson Arizona. I will explore what responsibility means and what it means to us, I will layout the circumstances as far as is known, and I will explore possible solutions to help prevent such an atrocity to occur.
So we know what in the world we are talking about, let's define responsibility. In the Dictionary.com (or should we say at Dictionary.com, I figure its a dictionary) the word responsibility has one meaning of "a particular burden of obligation upon one who is responsible." The word responsible has a definition of the same source as "answerable or accountable, as for something within one's power, control, or management." You may ask how in the world are we the people managers of the circumstances that day? Its hard to see the responsibility. One form of responsibility that has been thrown around is the gun and violent references made in today's political rhetoric. If that has any part in this incident, its a small one, but it is a circumstance. Beside the obvious legal issues this incident brings up, there exists the concept of social responsibility which is one of the main responsibilities of every citizen. Social responsibility includes how we interact with one another, how we argue, and how we do on curtailing violence. How are regular citizens supposed to curtail violence, isn't that the job for the police? Every act of violence starts with an idea. These ideas are anti-social and violent in nature. How are we doing teaching each other to argue ideas civilly rather than resorting to violence? Not very good as far as I can see. How many heated arguments are there going on on the internet today? How many people cause strife on purpose? There is a social imbalance there. Causing anger in people is never without its consequences. Bullying is a social crime. Bullying can also be a legal crime when its accompanied with verbal abuse or results in a death. How many people know how to argue civilly or to walk away from verbal abuse? Apparently, it's not enough.
What were the pertinent circumstances for the Tucson shooting? There were good and bad circumstances. Gabrielle Giffords decided to meet her constituents out side a common supermarket. This was the main circumstance. This type of circumstance was set up by the nature of our democratic republic. The Representative of the People must meet the People in person. They must interact. Thus a level of insecurity was accepted. The political rhetoric had been passionate in the last few months. The rhetoric included violent imagery and wording. This can explain a passionate crowd and could have helped the shooter take a gun that day to the scene. Children were present, namely Christina Taylor Green who was nine years old looking to learn about politics and democracy and to help others by meeting her representative in person. There was a crowd of people in a limited area which prevented movement. Finally there came the shooter apparently out of his mind. I heard that he was suffering form a form of schizophrenia or that he lost his grasp on reality. The shooter had a gun he purchased legally. These circumstances I gleaned from hearing news reports. For many of these circumstances, if they were not present some lives could have been saved. The circumstance of the crowd and no movement was a sign that there was potential risk present. Any time you have a crowd there is risk involved. If the crowd cannot move then the risk is very high. What if some car ran into that crowd? They could not move away fast enough. A car did not run into the crowd but a shooter shot into the crowd and the crowd could not move. There was risk involved there. These circumstances came together and aided the result we all saw on January 8th.
Now, what how could have socially responsible citizens preventing all these circumstances from intersecting at the place and time of the shooting? I cannot argue against Giffords' action of setting up or attending the function in front of the grocery store. Social responsibility calls for interaction and peaceful communication among people. Passionate rhetoric can get out of hand. Social responsibility calls to curb the passion, or encourage to argue civilly and not in extremes. This could have changed the shooter's mind from even going to the scene that day. It also might have curbed his thoughts about violence. Having children present is a touchy subject. Social responsibility requires the chaperon to continually evaluate the situation for danger. Was there cause to make the chaperon of Christina Taylor Green suspicious of a dangerous situation. We could speculate here, but I'd rather leave it with her chaperon that day to judge. Clearly a protective mindset was called for in similar situations. About the crowd not being able to move, I feel that the citizens participating in Giffords' event could have asked to move the event over to a more open area. This type of social responsibility we rarely see. We want to leave it up to some security personnel. That day there were no security personnel. In such a case I believe that responsible citizens can look over the situation and influence a better setup. The shooter didn't have a grasp on reality. Where was his support group? Perhaps he had none. He seemed to have some friends on the internet, and you have to wonder how they handled him and each other. Too often people on the internet provoke other people and bully them or manipulate them for some reaction. This is not social responsibility, but it's social irresponsibility. We need to watch out how we treat other people even in impersonal formats like the internet. Above all empathy could have influenced the shooter to not commit such an event. To empathize with someone is not to condone them or even to like them, but it can be used to influence them and nudge them in a little different way. You see if any of these circumstances were nudge in different way the results would have been far less tragic.
Social responsibility includes empathy, caring, being aware of circumstances, acting to reduce risk, being a friend, and a myriad of other things. These things culminate in interacting with other people and not keeping to yourself nor just look out for number one. As tragic the shooting in Tucson was, there have been other tragic situations in the past and there will be in the future. If we are socially responsible we can minimize the effects of these situations. Those who are socially responsible we end up calling heroes. Heroes of that day were pointed out by President Obama in his speech to Tucson and the nation.
Here is his speech in its entirety from PBS:
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