by Rachel Kurzius
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Need advice? You can write to Rachel via http://bit.ly/realtalkwithrachel or
at advice @ fastmail.net.
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Dear Rachel,
Years ago I received several medals for riflery at summer
camp. These were National Rifle Association medals.
Over the years I have come to despise everything that the
NRA stands for. After the horrible murder of children in Newtown, Connecticut,
I detest the NRA even more.
While these medals have a slight sentimental value to me
because they are a link to fun summers at camp, I am inclined to sent them back
to the NRA. The NRA won't care, I'm sure. Nobody will care or notice, for that
matter.
Should I send these medals back to the NRA? Is that the
right thing to do?
Shooting in the Dark
Dear Shooting in the Dark,
The murder of those 20 children in Newtown was a
horrible, stomach-churning, tear duct-wetting and bizarre event. In addition to
making me terribly sad, it also made me feel helpless. I’ve found that many
others share that sense of helplessness -- the inability to do anything to help
those beautiful children and adults as grisly details emerge and memorials
blossom. I think you share this helplessness, too, Shooting in the Dark.
And in our helplessness, we turn to pointing fingers. The
National Rifle Association has certainly taken a fair share of the blame for
the Newtown massacre. Depending on where you stand, the organization has either
earned this scorn or has become a scapegoat. Your letter made it clear where
you fall in this debate.
This is where your ostensible question comes into play --
should you send back summer camp riflery medals issued by the NRA, the group
you believe to be complicit in the gun-violence plaguing our great nation?
As you note, “Nobody will care or notice for that matter”
if you send those antique medals back to the NRA. In an instance like that,
where your actions will have no impact on others, you certainly wouldn’t be
doing anything wrong. But that wasn’t your question. You asked if it was the
right thing to do. I don’t think that sending those medals back is the right
thing to do, Shooting in the Dark, because you can do so much more.
Your medals aren’t the problem, so getting rid of them
isn’t a meaningful solution.
I can sense your feeling of ickiness about those medals
through the letter you wrote, though. You hate that they say “NRA” on them. But
you don’t hate the medals themselves, which remind you of times gone by at
camp. As someone who also attended sleepaway camp, I understand why you’d want
these trinkets around. After all, I’ve got every “Paper Plate Award” (“Most
Likely to Break Her Flip-Flops,” if you were curious) lying around in the nooks
and crannies of my closet. Those silly paper plates bring me back to those
mornings at flag pole and Color War.
If your hatred of the “NRA” emblazoned on the medals
outweighs your sense of nostalgia, get rid of them. Send them back to the NRA,
if you’d like. You’d be doing the Postal Service employees a favor, anyway. But
it’s not going to kick that sense of ickiness you feel.
So what will? What is the “right” thing to do?
I’m not sure, Shooting in the Dark. Sometimes crazy,
awful, inexplicable stuff happens, and when it does, it erodes the sense that
we have control, that we can keep our loved ones safe, if only we can do the
"right” thing.
It’s become cliche since Newtown to tell people to hold
their children a little tighter and express their feelings of love and
adoration for others. You should still do that. Embrace your loved ones and
smell their special smells. Feel grateful that you’re contemplating old summer
camp medals instead of miniature coffins.
You can do more than that, though, and I get the feeling
from your letter that you’d like to do more. If you’re repulsed by current gun
laws, now seems like the time to act on those feelings. Do your research.
Figure out what you’d like to change. Try to find groups in the area that share
your vision and your approach towards achieving it.
You say that you have come to despise the NRA, but I
implore you to focus your energies on something you can be for, rather than
against.
The Newtown massacre sparked a sense of righteous
indignation, but will it last? Will it result in any legislative or cultural
changes? It depends on people like you, Shooting in the Dark. Come into the
light to reshape the world into one where your medal-winning, summer camp self,
and all of the children like you once were, would be safer.
All the best,
Rachel
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Rachel Kurzius revels in giving advice, and has provided
counsel both as a columnist and a friend. She lives in Washington DC, where she
works as a news producer. Real Talk with Rachel is published on All Life is
Local and the Cleveland Park Listserv, www.cleveland-park.com,
on Wednesdays. Need advice? You can write to Rachel via http://bit.ly/realtalkwithrachel or
at advice @ fastmail.net.
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