Stop the Madness!

Horror, confusion, grief, terror, unimaginable, tragedy, chaos, sorrow, fear, resilience, anger devastating, mourning…

The vocabulary of mass violence is always appalling, and always the same whether the shots are fired in a classroom in Rhode Island or on a beach in Australia or countless other places.  Today, December 14, is the 13th anniversary of what we once thought was the worst school shooting ever to happen — Sandy Hook.  How wrong we were.  Today, December 14, 2025, we are trying to fathom the two most recent episodes of horrific mass murders by men with guns — a classroom full of students preparing for economics exams at Brown University in Providence; on Bondi Beach near Sydney, Australia crowded with a thousand or more Jewish people celebrating the first night of Hannukah.  Such different places, such similar scenes.  The shots, the running, the bodies, the hiding under desks or benches, the chaos and fear and sorrow.

Our hearts are heavy as we express solidarity and condolences to the community of Brown University, and the Jewish community in Australia.

Mass shootings have become so common that some of the students at Brown were already survivors of other school shootings.  The scandal of our times is the fact that children now grow up preparing to die in their classrooms.

There’s another part of the vocabulary that is also too familiar.  The president of the United States said last night, in reaction to the Brown shooting, that “all we can do is pray for the victims.”  To say that maybe there’s more we can do is to invite instant recrimination from some quarters.

So, yes, prayer is always a good thing — but it is not a substitute for real, durable, moral action to stop the violence.  It’s not just about gun control, although that seems so essential.  But finding a way for modern civilization to stop gun violence is about so much more — a real change of heart, an end to the savage political games and rhetoric that, itself, inflicts violence on minds and hearts.

I was thinking of this violent rhetoric when I wrote my last blog about the president’s statements about other people; and I thought about violent rhetoric again this week when I heard a quote from a public official that used the phrase “ruthlessly kill you” to express U.S. policy toward the perpetrators of attacks on our troops.  Yes, we must have an aggressive response to such attacks — but somehow hearing a public leader speak about ruthless killing seems to make the bloody environment even more treacherous, not more peaceful.

Can we ever stop this madness?  The violence of modern society betrays all of the advances of our civilization.  No matter our great technology and extreme wealth and superior playthings, we are all brought down by the savagery of ruthless, inexplicable killing.  There is no one solution, of course.  But to get any solution we need an environment that truly wants to solve the problems that sow the seeds of so much violence.  Right now, sadly, we do not have the leadership, the public willpower, the collective agreement to take the actions necessary.

What actions?

First, demand that all public leaders reduce their inflammatory and savage rhetoric, and instead, adopt the true rhetoric of leadership which is to calm rather than inflame, to be firm without sweeping oppression, to speak respectfully of others even when disagreeing, to seek peaceful resolutions of conflict rather than declaring endless war.

Second, insist that the wealthiest nation on earth spend a few dollars on common sense improvements in mental health services, in relief of poverty, in community actions that can bring people together instead of pitting people against each other with false scarcity of goods.

Third, and deeply important, to demand a cessation of the unfettered growth of private armaments — the proliferation of guns IS a problem, and is one of the best indicators we have of the violent tendencies of modern society.   When everyone feels a need to have weapons to defend themselves, no one feels safe.

Maybe none of these actions will stop the next mass murderer.  But neither will prayer alone.  Pray, yes, and then act — or as the famous Mother Jones quote says, “Pray for the dead. Fight like hell for the living.”