Flags Half Mast and the Lies They Tell

There is a flag pole outside the window near my desk at work. I’ve stared at it a million times before but more often than not, I forget it’s even there. It bellows in the breeze trying to make it’s presence known when I look out the window to see what the traffic is like or if it’s raining. It’s a symbol of our nation that really doesn’t move me very much on an ordinary day.

Until today. Today, the flag was lowered to half mast and it bothered me.

This past Wednesday, 17 people were killed at a Florida high school when a former student decided to work out his feeling with an assault rifle. America is quite familiar with mass shootings because we have them so often that the event is usually forgotten days later as the news cycle churns on. It was just this past October that a gunman killed 58 people and injured over 500. This was the largest mass shooting in modern history and we have already moved on. Just a month later, a gunman killed 27 people inside of a Texas church and we moved on. But not before giving our thoughts and prayers.

Just like the flag was lowered as a symbolic show of mourning for the high schoolers and teachers killed, I’m sure the same thing was done after all of the other shootings that caught the nation’s attention and even those that barely made the local news. Yet, what is ironic is that no matter how many adults are killed at a Las Vegas concert, and Orlando nightclub or innocent children in a school, the most that we can expect to happen is that the flags will be lowered, thoughts and prayers and then we will move on.

America and violence are go hand and hand. Violence is woven into the very fabric of this nation’s inception. Guns are idols and are almost as patriotic a symbol as the flag itself. The second amendment grants us the right the bear arms and there are people and organizations like the NRA who are fully invested in making sure that those rights stay in place. The NRA is so invested in guns that they have essentially bought politicians who will make sure to always vote in the organizations favor when it comes to gun legislation. At this point, there is no amount of bodies that will make the NRA or gun fanatics think twice about advocating for stricter gun laws. A classroom full of dead 5 and 6 year olds at Sandy Hook Elementary told us that. A politician who himself was shot and almost killed yet still refused to back stricter gun laws told us that.

But please, lower the flags as a sign of mourning whenever a tragedy like this happens like an abusive lover bringing flowers. It’s a nice gesture, yet we know the blows are coming again soon. While there are certainly many around this country reeling from yet another senseless mass shooting, this nation is not truly mourning. To truly mourn means we would be spurred into action so that no other teenager brandishing an assault rifle can take the lives of their former classmates. To truly mourn means thoughts and prayers would be followed up by action from politicians and lawmakers. To truly mourn means that this nation comes to grips with is violent obsession with guns and admits that change needs to happen. Until then, lowered flags as a symbol of mourning is just an empty lie from the nation that keeps abusing us.

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