Tough Talk

There is obviously nothing I can say about the Javon Belcher story which hasn't already been said. In the two days since the Kansas City Chiefs linebacker shot his girlfriend to death before taking his own life at the team's facilities, sportswriters have been breaking out their thesauruses to try and come up with new and inventive ways to say the situation is sad and unfortunate. At some point continuing to talk about it almost becomes useless, because you just keep going over the same things. After a while you have to ask what can you possible add to this story without taking some insanely anti-popular position which is nothing more than a way to bring attention to yourself? That is why often in situations like this people often try to use a tragedy to start a larger conversation, which is what is happening now. People in the media have largely skipped over the personal aspect of this story and instead tried to tackle the larger conversation points like whether or not the Chiefs should have even played the game, if they should have had a more specific moment of silence, whether concussions had anything to do with Belcher's behavior and the topic of domestic violence as a whole. The topic which appears to have the most momentum is the issue of gun control. Some in the media are saying that this is what happens when guns are so readily available, while others are saying that even if he didn't have a gun Belcher would have found another method to carry out his intentions. Whichever side of the issue you may fall on, at least you are willing to voice your opinion, because so many are not.

After a serious or tragic event occurs, nothing drives me crazier than when people try to have an informed yet controlled conversation about one aspect of the incident, only to be shouted down by other people with the flippant response of, "This isn't the time to have a conversation like that." It's not? Actually, I contend right after something happens is exactly the time to have serious and difficult conversations. Honestly, if you aren't going to talk about an issue when it is being mentioned at the start of every news cast, when are you going to bring it up? Because if you bring up an issue like gun control in a normal setting most people are going to either quickly agree with you or try and change the subject to avoid having an awkward conversation. (As they should. If you think about it, bringing up a topic like this out of the blue on a random Saturday night is truly not the time to have this conversation.) People are at their most impassioned in times like this and if you can change their minds now than you may actually have changed their minds for good, rather than thinking you've won when they were only agreeing with you to shut you up and all you've succeeded at doing is getting yourself disinvited from next month's Game Night.

I can respect the counter-argument which says that trying to change people's mind when they are this impassioned is impossible because they are too emotional and waiting until the scar has started to heal is the right move, because everyone will be more rational and willing to have a calm conversation. That sounds all well and good, but the problem with that idea is that things are never going to be that calm. The world keeps on spinning, which means something else will happen that will get people's blood boiling and trying to bring up a hot-button issue at that time will get you dismissed almost as quickly as trying to bring it up when it is still fresh in peoples' minds will. Even worse, there is no council which decides what is important enough to warrant being interrupted, because it never seems like we avoid one tough conversation to have another one. We just push things away and hope they are forgotten about by tomorrow. ("How can you try and talk about gun control on the same day we found out Princess Kate is pregnant?") If you insist on waiting to have a debate about hard issues until all the other problems of the world have been solved you will never solve anything.

The simple truth is that it just seems as though we are trying to push away these hard discussions for as long as possible, when talking about them is actually the only thing which will bring any resolution. We can't push them off forever, so we may as well get started sooner rather than later. The other thing is that I honestly believe people are too afraid of these conversations and that if they started talking, they would be pleasantly surprised to find out it doesn't turn out that badly. Sure, bringing up gun control will bring out the extremists on both sides of the issue - the ones who want all guns melted down and turned into electric cars and the ones who think it is perfectly logical for them to want a rocket launcher because Thomas Jefferson wrote they had the right to defend themselves will come out of the woodwork. [Sidebar: at the risk of revealing where I land on this issue, if you need an AK-47 with armor-piercing bullets to 'defend your family' I think you should seriously ask yourself who you pissed off and then go back and examine a few more of the life choices you've made.] However, what I think would actually happen is that a large majority of people would fall into the happy medium and agree to compromise on certain aspects. We shouldn't allow the fringes to control the conversation just because it is a touchy subject. No one wins in that scenario. Better to stop pushing hard topics to the back burner let the two sides scream it out in the name of progress. Because while I don't know which side is right, I know it is a conversation we should be having.