Post Columbine, Virginia Tech, and now Sandy Hook, there is press regarding gun control. I propose that gun control laws will put a Band-Aid over a chasm.
I am not opposed to stricter gun laws, and do I believe a person needs 40 guns? No. But, I see things with a broader perspective.
Let us examine a "hypothetical" story about "Jimmy." Jimmy is born to a crack addict. His first years of life are fraught with abuse and severe neglect. He is brought to an emergency department three times with injuries before a nurse finally makes a DCF referral. It takes two months for DCF to find Jimmy - filthy and mute in a corner of a rat infested apartment. DCF takes custody of Jimmy, pulling him from all he’s ever known. Twenty-three new and old fractures are found throughout his body. He is placed in foster care. He is shuffled from home to home falling through the cracks in school, unable to read past a first grade level. By age 13 he has attacked teachers and schoolmates and is placed in residential placement for "aggressive behaviors." Jimmy has no attachments and has never been shown love or affection. He sees a therapist who talks to him with puppets about controlling his temper, but never asks about his traumatic memories. He is medicated - but how does a person medicate thirteen years of abuse and neglect. Jimmy is the feral cat pressing his nose to a window in the rain, looking in at a loving family from the outside, unable to join. He finds solace in a gang. By age 18 I see Jimmy on the news, an "18-year-old man sentenced to life in prison for killing a convenience store owner during a robbery."
When and who failed Jimmy? Society has seen these stories over and over, yet no one has stood up and said “No more!” No more will we allow children to fall through the cracks. No more will we put children into a flawed system that is underfunded and under-appreciated. Never again will we allow a Jimmy to grow without love into a feral creature.
In the richest state in the country, how is it possible that I see children without jackets in downtown Hartford? Children who are pregnant at 16 because they need money and they get more money from the state if they have a child? I’ve taken care of children in the emergency department who have no food, and no future.
Gun control? I shake my head in shame. Gun control will not keep guns out of the hands of our children. We need a systems change. We as a society have to take ownership of these mass shootings and the collapse of the mental health system. We have to take ownership of the quiet withdrawal of state funding from residential placements, inpatient beds, and outpatient clinics. We have to take ownership of DCF - again underpaid, understaffed and inherently flawed.
Who failed Jimmy? The nurses who discharged him from the NICU with his drug abusing mother? The doctors who sent him home over and over from the emergency department to sustain more bruises and injuries. Was it his neighbors who never called the police when they heard his cries? Was it his mental health workers who have no adequate training in trauma treatment and who perhaps came on the scene to late? Was it his teachers who ignored his low cognitive functioning? Was it you or me who looked the other way when his sad empty eyes looked into ours while he was dragged by us on the sidewalk as we walked to work? There are so many steps in the downward spiral of a person’s humanity. It was not just one person responsible for Jimmy’s downfall.
Just as guns are not the sole reasons for these mass shootings. We as a society are all responsible. Democrats, Republicans, black, white, rich and poor, we are all to blame. The only way to solve these issues will be to unite across parties, across races, and class lines.
I am a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I work within this flawed system in hopes of being part of a change. But I cannot do it alone. I urge you to rise and take responsibility as a citizen of this country- as a person who will do anything to preserve her own humanity- I ask that you take a stand and not look the other way when you walk by the next Jimmy. Contact your state legislator and plead for mental health funding for children. Plead for funding for DCF. I am not above begging if it means preventing another Sandy Hook. The question is how far are you willing to go to save our children?
Meredith Bailey
Hamden