Stop Saying Lives are ‘Lost’ to Gun Violence!

 

Stop Saying Lives are ‘Lost’ to Gun Violence!

Here of late, I've been seeing more and more people use the term 'lost' to describe those taken from us as a result of gun violence. In the most recent mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, it became doubly tragic when it became known a 2 year old was discovered wandering alone in the area. Both his parents had been killed. I have yet to see those describing this 2 year old's plight as anything but 'he lost his parents'. That's just wrong! He didn't lose his parents. They were taken from him. They were killed. They were murdered.

Folks, we need to change the mindset. 

Ditch the habit.

People murdered with a gun do not ‘lose’ their lives. Their loved ones don't 'lose' them.

I know, I know – the dictionary defines 'lose' as “to suffer loss through the death of a person”. 

Whose ‘loss’ would that be, though? 

Yours?

Mine?

How about the person who died?

In gun violence vernacular, the word is ‘murdered’.

The very definition of murder (FBI) makes me cringe. It should make EVERYONE cringe because it's f**king CRINGEWORTHY!!! 

Murder involves a ‘taking’. It involves someone’s life being ripped away in a most violent and unforgiving manner. 

There is no sugarcoating that fact.

Old habits die hard. Eliminating clichés from our lexicon of word usage is harder.

I catch myself thinking ‘lives are lost’ more often than I care to admit upon learning of a mass shooting. But I catch and correct myself because that terminology no longer emotionally reflects how I view mass shootings. 

It didn’t used to be that way. 

Mass shootings used to cause me a lot of anxiety, sadness, and serious depression. Now, mass shootings make me angry…very angry. 

‘Lives are lost’ just does not adequately convey that anger any longer as death tolls from mass shootings are made public. In fact, hearing those words to describe fatalities in mass shootings is offensive to me now…seriously offensive. 

So, when I hear anyone (friends, family, media) say ‘lives were lost’ in a mass shooting, that’s a trigger for me (no pun intended). It’s especially so when comparisons to other mass shootings are inevitably made.

It only adds to the problem when pundits and politicians invariably offer some of those very effective (said with tongue firmly planted in cheek) thoughts and prayers to accompany the ‘lives are lost’ mantra. 

No action, but thoughts and prayers should do the trick, eh?

But I digress.

In today’s adversarial gun violence/control/reform debate, using ‘lives are lost’ to describe murder is a cop-out plain and simple.

It isn’t sympathetic.

It isn’t empathetic.

It’s disingenuous. 

It’s disrespectful. 

It’s just as bad as someone offering those well intentioned but thoroughly ineffective thoughts and prayers mentioned previously. 

Someone was killed. 

Someone was murdered. 

Their friends, their families, their loved ones were traumatized.

It is sudden. 

It is violent. 

It is, above all else, fatal.

It doesn’t get any worse than that.

Is it really that difficult to understand that ‘lives are lost’ terminology to describe murders in a mass shooting of any kind – school, movie theater, church, university, home, music venue, and most recently a 4th of July Independence Day parade – can be, and arguably should be, viewed as inappropriate? 

I see the words ‘lives were lost’ used by those keeping track of gun violence statistics.

I see the words ‘lives were lost’ used by relatives.

I see the words ‘lives were lost’ used by friends I’ve never even met on social media. 

I’ve started calling all of them out on this. Some don’t like me doing that. Others have been very accepting. 

I won’t stop.

Until ‘lives were lost’ is no longer used to describe those murdered every time there’s a horrific mass shooting, we’re fighting a losing battle to end gun violence. 

We actually need to get, and stay, angry about use of that label.

Then we need to turn that anger into positive action.

Some are already doing so. More need to be.

Perhaps it’s time to start advocating eliminating the words ‘lives were lost’ from our descriptions of mass shooting victims, and consistently and persistently say what it is – PEOPLE WERE MURDERED!

My two cents.

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