Our New Normal

On this day, May 29, 2023 we Americans observe Memorial Day, the day we honor the men and women of our armed services who gave their lives in the service of our country. It is right and just that we do this. We must never forget them and their sacrifice. 

During my childhood, my family had a tradition of visiting the graves of our deceased family members on Memorial Day, whether they were veterans or not. It was right and just that we did that too.

Last Memorial Day came directly on the heels of the beginning of Russia's war in Ukraine, inspiring me to dedicate my last Memorial Day post to "the people who through no fault of their own, get caught up in war." I then went on to liken Ukrainians and civilians in war zones all over the world, killed while going about their everyday lives, to people in this country going about their daily lives who are killed in gun violence. 

It is also right and just to do this.

Because perhaps every Memorial Day from now on, we will be reminded of two specific days of infamy in our own country, the anniversaries of two American massacres that occurred just before the holiday last year, to be exact: May 14, 2022, at a Tops Grocery Store in Buffalo, New York, and May 24, 2022 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. 

Yet another truly horrifying and repulsive thing is this: in our day there are more mass shootings in the United States in one year than there are days in a year, so one can mark the anniversary of a mass shooting practically every day of the year. Worse still, the number of mass shooting victims is a small fraction of the total number of victims of gun violence in this country.

In 2022, according to the web site The Trace, 20,138 gun deaths, (not including suicides), occurred in the United States. That number was a slight decrease from the previous record-setting year.

Now consider this: inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, there are 58,318 names of all the U.S. service men and women who either died or were MIA during that conflict which for us lasted between 1955 and 1975. 

You do the math.

This is our new normal. There are so many gun tragedies in our country that unless they are particularly horrific in terms of the number or age of the victims, or the reasons why they were killed, we hardly notice anymore.

It's tempting to find a single culprit for these horrible statistics, but there are many. According to this Wikipedia chart which is quite out of date, for every 100 people in the United States, there were 120 guns.  That number is significantly higher today. Number two on the list is Serbia with a paltry 37.2 guns for every 100 people followed by Canada, with 34.7 guns for every 100 people, and Finland with 32.4.  If you remove the U.S. from that equation, it is obvious that the number of guns per person in a country, does not necessarily correlate with a high gun-murder rate.

The countries with the highest gun-murder rates in the world are concentrated in one geographical area, Central America and parts of South America, with Venezuela and El Salvador far and away leading the pack with 36.75 and 36.34 gun related deaths per 100,000 people respectively, according to a recent web site from World Popluation Review. According to that site, those numbers are attributable to "the prevalence of criminal gangs and a vibrant drug trafficking industry." In El Salvador, at least according to the older Wikipedia list, there were only 5.8 guns per 100 people in 2015. By contrast, Serbia, Finland and Canada all with about seven times the number of guns-per-capita, had 4.8, 2.9 and 2.3 gun-=murders per 100K people respectively.

From the World Population Review list, the United States experienced 10.89 firearm related deaths per 100K in the past year, a rate comparable to those of Uruguay, Paraguay and Panama.

If one only looks at these numbers, gun rights advocates have a point when they say limiting the number of guns available to the general public is not going to eliminate gun violence.

But what do we make of the off-the-charts number of guns in this country? Remember, there are almost four times as many guns-per-capita in the States than in Serbia, the country second place in that category the world.

My take is that with all those guns available, it is stupid easy to get your hands on one in this country, be you a responsible gun owner, a run-of-the-mill criminal, or a sociopath. And with few meaningful restrictions on the sale, manufacture, possession and the carrying of firearms in many U.S. states, and even more lax restrictions on the way, it's only going to become more stupidly easy in the future. 

True, the U.S. is not in the top twenty in the world in terms of gun-murder rate, it's number 22, according to the WPR list. That's hardly a bragging right.

But as far as public mass shootings go, along with per-capita gun ownership, we are in a class all by ourselves. 

The connection may be purely anecdotal, but I don't think so. Gun rights activists claim other culprits for the preponderance of mass shootings in this country, mental health being number one. 

I don't buy it. As far as I know, there are people with mental health issues everywhere in the world, not just in the States. I'm not even convinced that all perpetrators of mass shootings are indeed mentally ill. There are certainly millions of people in this country and elsewhere with mental health issues who would not harm anyone, let alone commit mass murder. I'm all in on making mental health a priority in this nation. But the emphasis on mental illness being a major cause of violence is no more than a smokescreen from the issue of gun legislation and an excuse to stigmatize and marginalize yet another group of people. 

Regardless, the one thing we have that nobody else does here in the good ol' U.S.A., along with a mass shooting or two every day, is unfettered access to guns. 

What IS sick are politicians looking for gun lobby money and a few extra votes, people who could make a difference to save at least some lives, wearing lapel pins in the likeness of AR-15 assault rifles, the preferred weapon of mass shooters. 

What a slap in the face to the people who lost loved ones to those weapons of mass destruction. 

They may as well piss on the graves of our fallen soldiers, seamen, airmen and women. I have no doubt that in exchange for money and a vote or two, they would do just that.

Decoration Day

The bookends of summer in the United States are two very important holidays, Memorial Day and Labor Day. They are especially important because they both commemorate people whose contributions and sacrifices to this country have enabled all of us to live in relative freedom and prosperity, blessings that most of us take for granted today. A good example of that is how many of us confuse the two holidays. Just the other day before the long weekend, more than one person wished me a happy Labor Day.

Like everything these days it seems, Memorial Day has been politicised. It has now become de-rigeur in some circles to chastise folks who wish each other a "Happy Memorial Day." No, this is not a happy day of  frivolity they say, it is a day of solemn remembrance of our servicemen and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice for this country. Well it certainly is that, but it does seem to be rather heavy handed to insist that it cannot be both a day of remembrance, and a day to celebrate. After all the men and women who served AND died in their service, did not die so that we would forever be in their debt (that part goes without saying), they died so that we could be free.

Memorial Day has its roots in ancient customs of special days devoted to visiting cemeteries and decorating the graves dead loved ones. The most famous of these events, one that is very much alive and well to this day, is Dia de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, which is celebrated in Mexico between October 31st and November 2nd. The holiday is anything but a solemn day of mourning, but a a day of celebration and festivities, designed to re-connect those of us in the land of the living, with our loved ones who have gone to their eternal reward.

Foreign as these festivities may seem today to those of us who do not share that particular culture, most cultures had similar festivities involving gathering at cemeteries to honor the dead and to maintain the graves of loved ones. These days were called Decoration Days. In the days before cemeteries that insured the perpetual maintenance of gravesites, these events not only helped bond the living with the dead, but also provided a means to maintain their graves, preventing them from being swallowed up by nature.

The established American practice of a Decoration Day to honor the war dead, probably began in the South during the Civil War where the tradition of setting aside a day to lay flowers at the graves of fallen soldiers took place, The practice was picked up sporadically in the North as well. No American war was as costly as our Civil War where over 600,000 lives were lost. So profound was the loss that national cemeteries were founded just to house the remains of dead soldiers. The most famous consecration of such a place of honor, took place on November 19, 1863 in the town of Gettysburg, PA, four months after the battle that took place outside of town that claimed about 51,000 lives on both sides.

Monument to General John A. Logan, Grant Park, Chicago

The idea of setting aside an official national Decoration Day to honor the Civil War dead, came after the war and was initiated by John A. Logan, a Union Civil War general and Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. The first observance of Decoration Day in the United States was May 30, 1868. The date was chosen because it was not an anniversary of any significant battle of the war and because it was an ideal day for flowers to be in bloom.

Gradually, Decoration Day began to be observed on May 30th on a state by state basis in the north, while each southern state had its own day of remembrance for the Confederate dead, which many still observe to this day. It wasn't until World War I, where the day would become a remembrance for the fallen soldiers of all wars, not just the Civil War. The term "Memorial Day" was coined in the 1880s but never took hold until the 1970s, when the holiday was officially recognized in all fifty states.

Memorial Day has become a patriotic day of parades, picnics, and a celebration as the first official day of summer. Critics say much of the significance of the day has been lost since observation of the holiday was moved from May 30, to the last Monday of May, creating a three day weekend for most working people. Perhaps this is true. But I see no harm in celebrating this day. After all, we as a nation owe a great deal of debt to the men and women of the armed services who have fought and sometimes died in order to keep us free. Now that, is something to celebrate.

We owe it to them to remember them, but more importantly to remember that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Wrapping ourselves in the flag or making empty patriotic gestures on this or any other day means nothing. We must keep in mind that threats to the values of this nation not only come from abroad, but from within. Our own hubris, greed, sloth, hatred of those not like ourselves, self-serving attitudes, unrelenting lust for power, and perhaps most importantly, our lack of concern for the lives of other people, are as much a threat to our democratic principles, as threats from any outside power. We owe it to our servicemen and women, especially those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, to take part in our democracy, to vote, and when we see fit, to use our voices against oppression, injustice, and intolerance, and most of all, to care about our nation and our world. If we fail, then their sacrifice will have been in vain.

On this Memorial Day, I give thanks to all of you who have devoted yourself in service to this country. Your sacrifice and devotion will never be forgotten. And to all I wish you without reservation, a happy Memorial Day.