I nearly always see the glass half full. The perspective is the lasting gift from my mother, who was a relentless optimist.
But every time a mass shooting occurs, I enter a very dark space.
I live a little over an hour from Newtown, Conn. On Dec. 14 it will be 10 years since a very sick and troubled young man in Newtown used an assault weapon to kill his mother, six women who taught or led Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, and 20 children before killing himself.
That we haven’t managed to ban assault weapons and didn’t pass meaningful legislation immediately in the wake of that slaughter still haunts me.
In the years since, you can pick among the multiple mass shootings to become emotional about. No ethnic or age group has escaped. When a mass shooting occurred in my beloved hometown of Buffalo in May, on streets so familiar to me, the same nausea and feeling of helplessness came back. But then more children were murdered at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. And in Colorado Springs, last month, five more were killed at an LGBTQ nightclub.
That adds up to a lot of empty chairs around holiday tables this year.
Pick your heartbreak. There’s plenty to choose from.
When Newtown happened, Connecticut’s Sen. Chris Murphy was 39, a father of two young boys and a newly-elected U.S. senator who had not yet moved into his offices on Capitol Hill. The horrifying shootings handed him what would become his signature issue. He has not stopped talking since about the need for common-sense gun legislation, on which most people agree.
After Uvalde, Murphy took to the floor of the Senate to plead with his colleagues. “Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job, of putting yourself in a position of authority, if your answer as the slaughter increases and our kids run for their lives, is to do nothing?”
And yet, almost inexplicably, Murphy feels optimism on an issue over which I routinely despair.
It made me wonder: What does he see that I don’t?
This past week I was at a conference in Las Vegas, Nev., and had lunch with a staff member of Everytown for Gun Safety, a nationwide non-profit, grassroots group dedicated to ending gun violence.
The staff member said he felt optimism, too.
So, are these people crazy? Or are they sensing something beyond the ongoing carnage?
One reason for encouragement is that the National Rifle Association is weaker today than it was a decade ago when it prevented any gun legislation from passing Congress. It is still a player, God knows, but its effectiveness is diminished by scandals, allegations of corruption and lawsuits.
Another is that this year, for the first time in 30 years, Congress passed a bipartisan bill that encourages states to pass “red flag” laws that remove guns from people considered a threat to others or themselves and institutes tougher background checks for young people who want to buy a gun.
These are tiny, timid, baby steps. I wanted more. Many did. But to activists, the fact that the legislation passed is huge.
It’s a sign that something is changing.
The movement to reduce gun violence has also gotten smarter in its terminology. The term “gun control,” which was used for decades, became a lightning rod for the opposition. Now the preferred term is “gun safety,” which is less liable to conjure up visions of government bureaucrats arriving to confiscate guns from law-abiding citizens.
But finally, the main reason for optimism, Murphy believes, is that he and others, along with the countless survivors of mass shootings and grieving family members who have buried loved ones, have built a movement. One that is gaining momentum.
He sees it as becoming stronger than the gun rights movement.
We’ll need all the momentum we can get, given the fact that America is swimming in a sea of 400 million guns.
The road to some form of sanity seems very steep indeed.
But if this has truly become a movement, let the late, great, Rep. John Lewis have the last word. Lewis was a hero of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. He was a believer in non-violent protest even as bigots fractured his skull near Selma, Ala. when he marched for voting rights on the Edmund Pettus Bridge (Pettus was a leader of the 19th century Ku Klux Klan).
The date was March 7, 1965 but it would be remembered forever after as Bloody Sunday.
Lewis lived to serve in Congress for decades and always had a vision for a better America. He cornered the market on optimism. And he had words of counsel for all, like me, who despair that the country will be safer, more equal, more just someday.
In his book, “Across that Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change,” Lewis wrote a message to all who work for change:
“Know that this transformation will not happen right away. Change often takes time. It rarely happens all at once. In the movement, we didn’t know how history would play itself out. When we were getting arrested and waiting in jail or standing in unmovable lines on the courthouse steps, we didn’t know what would happen, but we knew it had to happen.
“Pace yourself. We used to say that ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.
“And if we believe in the change we seek, then it is easy to commit to doing all we can, because the responsibility is ours alone to build a better society and a more peaceful world.”
As a cock-eyed optimist, I was frequently prone to times of despair when things didn't turn out like I thought they should. I shifted to doomsaying pessimist. Thankfully, things now seem to turn out even less like I expected. I've concluded that the future will both delight and appall us.
I know it's a cliché... but it takes one to know one.