Our ‘obligation to try’

It was of course entirely coincidental that my column last week was about a gun incident at Chico Junior High School 10 years ago, and that it appeared the day before the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

I’m happy to report that my story had a happy ending, unlike what happened in Newtown. On Friday morning, as news of the massacre was breaking, I received an email message from John Mealley. He’s the retired principal who, along with Chico Junior counselor Jorge Salas, was trying to reconnect with the young woman who brought a gun to campus on Dec. 13, 2002, and held several people, including them, hostage.

The men, who stayed with the 14-year-old for as long as it took to convince her to surrender her weapon, wanted to reconcile with her. They wanted to tell her they forgave her, but they didn’t know how to reach her. They were hoping someone who knew her whereabouts would read my account and contact them.

That’s exactly what happened. John writes, “The good news is that a former student contacted me, and I have found the girl through Facebook. She welcomed me as a friend, and now we can start the process” of healing and reconciliation.

Like most Americans, I’ve been thinking a lot about gun violence this week. In his moving talk Sunday at Newtown, President Obama asked, “Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” Well, if our practice as a nation is any indication, the answer is “yes.”

Mass killings get the headlines, but they account for a relatively small number of the deaths. The Children’s Defense Fund reports that in 2008 and 2009, 5,740 children were killed by guns; 299 of them were under the age of 10. Nearly half were African American. As the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen writes, “What the ghetto, the inner city, the blighted neighborhood, the storied ’hood have in common with the bucolic Newtown is the mayhem of guns.”

More than 34,000 of us, including thousands of children, die in automobile accidents every year, something we accept as “the price of freedom.” But at least with cars we try to make them safer and regulate their use. With guns, anything goes.

We’ll never end gun violence, but maybe we can decrease it. Nobody needs a military weapon in everyday life. Nobody needs 30-round clips. And nobody should be able to purchase a weapon without undergoing a comprehensive background check.

Also, we need better mental-health services. Virtually all mass killings are perpetrated by disturbed young men, and our failure to identify and treat them is a national disgrace.

“Surely we can do better than this,” the president said. “We have an obligation to try.”

If any good is to come out of the Newtown massacre, that’s it: recognizing our responsibility to try to lessen gun violence, however we can do it, and acting on it.