What's it All About?

As other attacks (Moscow) and shootings (Florida) take over the news internationally and in the U.S., Tucson is getting a bit of a reprieve from the spotlight.

It's been interesting to hear what Canadians tend to discuss in relation to the shooting, as opposed to what the discussion seems to be about in the U.S.

Canadians tend to want to talk about gun control. To a lesser extent, Canadians relate the Tucson shootings to mental health care, which (as with the rest of the U.S. healthcare system) is bewilderingly different and obviously inferior to Canada's.

The most public exception to this perspective is an opinion "writer" for Maclean's who I prefer not to name out of respect to those who actually write well-thought-out opinion pieces for that publication (even though I frequently disagree with them). This "writer" actually believes that if someone else in the Safeway parking lot had had a gun, fewer people would have been shot. (Aside from the other obviously ridiculous aspects of that statement, here's a question: How does she know no one else in that parking lot was carrying a gun?)

This is a storyline I've heard around the wires in the U.S. as well, which is as close as Americans can come to addressing issues of gun control. Because in the U.S., this event is not about gun control. It can't be. No discussion can be had about gun control, because a discussion that is a hollering match across a divide as wide as the Grand Canyon is not a real discussion.

Instead, the event in the U.S. has apparently become part of the storyline of the new, Republican-"led" Congress, what President Obama will say tonight in the State of the Union address, and whether he will win re-election in 21 months. It's all about the winning and the losing, folks.

Even the attempt to foster better communication (or appear to) by encouraging Democrats and Republicans to sit together, instead of in partisan groups, for tonight's speech has become all about "who's sitting by whom." Politics as high school.

Meanwhile, in Tucson, people are quietly trying to go about their lives. They are paying attention to their own mental health. Regular folks, along with political and religious leaders, are reclaiming the space in which the shootings occurred. The "I know someone who was there" and "I was across the street" and "an injured person is my neighbor" stories are working themselves out in their telling and re-telling.

As days become weeks and months, each person will make choices. They'll change, or not, based on what happened that day. Some may choose to continue to discuss guns, ethnicity, citizenship, mental health, public service, engagement, community.

But one thing Tucsonans know: the shooting is not even remotely about winning and losing. In Tucson, that small city, everyone is connected in some way to that event. They know all too well that real people lost their lives that day; their community lost a measure of innocence. A respected, vibrant Congresswoman struggles to recover. And no one--no one--won.