Mindy Newell: Why?
One of my favorite episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer is Season 2’s “Lie to Me” in which a friend of Buffy’s from her old school in Los Angeles comes to Sunnydale with the (secret) intention of giving Buffy to Spike in exchange for having Spike sire him… i.e., turn him in to a vampire.
Buffy escapes the death trap, and, in the coda, she and Giles are in the cemetery, standing before her friend’s grave.
It turned out that Buffy’s friend was dying (as described by the friend, it sounds like some form of cancer) and he was so desperate to live that he was willing to make the “devil’s bargain” with Spike. Buffy is trying to make sense of this, and as her friend rises from the grave.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say,” says Buffy.
“You don’t need to say anything,” says Giles.
“It would be simpler if I could just hate him. I think he wanted me to. It’d make it easier for him if he was just the villain of the piece. Really I think he was just scared.”
“Yes, I suppose he was,” says Giles.
“Nothing’s ever simple anymore. I’m constantly trying to work it out. Who to love, or hate, who to trust. Seems the more I know the more confused I get.”
“I believe that’s called growing up.”
“I’d like to stop then, okay?” says Buffy.
“I know the feeling.”
“Does it ever get easy?” Buffy asks her Watcher.
As that moment, Buffy’s friend rises from the grave, a vampire. Buffy makes quick work of him, and as his dust settles to the ground, she stops and looks at it, and continues the conversation.
“Does it ever get easy?
“You mean life?”
“Yes. Does it ever get easy?”
“What do you want me to say?”
Buffy looks at him. “Lie to me.”
Giles pauses for a brief moment before answering.
“Yes, it’s terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their horns or their black hats. We always defeat them them and save the day, and no one ever dies, and everyone lives happily ever after.”
“Liar,” Buffy says.
On Friday, December 14, a young man named Adam Lanza killed his mother in their home, and went to the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, CT, and killed six adults, including the principal and the school psychologist, and 20 children, ranging in age from 6 to 8.
Why?
On Friday, December 14, the Michigan State Assembly passed Bill 59, which allows an individual to carry a concealed weapon into what were considered so-called “gun-free” zones: schools, churches, synagogues, mosques (all places of worship), day care centers, sports arenas, bars, hospitals, college and university dorms, and casinos. Governor Snyder said he will sign it.
Why?
Lie to me.
TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis
As i quoted David Drake’s “Hammer’s Slammers” novel Rolling Hot after 9/11:
“Does it ever get easier?”
“No … but it gets over.”
I have no guns. Just to get that out of the way.
I do not have great fear of being shot at work, despite working at a high school that has, as all do, some young people who are a lot like this young man was. That’s probably because we are NOT a gun free zone. We have–officially–2 resource officers who are armed. Anyone planning on taking out as many people as they can with them had best consider the high likelihood that they will be taken out early in the effort, should they choose my school.
Some gun rights advocates have made the following claim–since at least 1950, virtually all mass shootings have taken place in places where guns were not allowed (the exception was the shooting of Gabby Giffords). I don’t have the time to check this out (or the interesting claim that the Colorado Dark Knight shooter skipped the closest movie theaters near his home to specifically go for the only one that had big “Gun Free Zone” signs.)
It makes sense though–if your intent is to kill a lot of people you go to A-where there are people and B-where there are NOT people who can stop you.
I don’t know what the realistic answer is, I don’t see us really allowing mass numbers of people with concealed weapons walking around New York and Detroit. A nation without any guns is a fantasy. None of the laws I’ve seen proposed in the wake of this tragedy would have had any effect on it. The guns were legal, the kid had not done anything worthy of institutionalism, the family was well off and needed no additional social programs…But I have yet o see any argument that declaring areas “Gun Free” will in any way stop anyone other than someone who has no intention of shooting up the place. I suppose they have a psychological effect on those who don’t dwell too long on the premise.
Thanks for not being one of the many people who are jumping on this for political points, and I mean people from ALL ends of the political spectrum. It’s unseemly.
Good column, Mindy. And I’m very fed up with Michigan Republicans.