San Bernardino and Empathy

I wrote a piece about the shootings in San Bernardino for CNN. Once the media realized it was neither terrorism nor Sandy Hook style massacre, national interest quickly faded. That's precisely the wrong choice.

My son is a 10-year-old boy with Down syndrome. He spends part of every school day in a special education classroom. He panics at loud sounds, placing his hands over his ears, crying, or just saying "no." It was too easy to imagine him there in San Bernardino. The new detail made the violence suddenly visceral.
The murder of teacher Karen Smith and 8-year-old Jonathan Martinez, one of her students, shines a spotlight on at least four of the major correlating factors that increase the risk that a person will suffer violence: disability, domestic abuse, race, and guns.
As we think about each one, we need to keep our empathy. We can't ever let ourselves get comfortable with this kind of slaughter. Then empathy must drive us to act by raising awareness about domestic violence and violence against people with disabilities. But most of all, as Karen Smith and Jonathan Martinez are laid to rest, we must first imagine, then act to create, an America in which there are fewer and fewer guns.

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