Comment: Hoping for heroes, we find humans after tragedy

By Robin Givhan / The Washington Post

In the aftermath of mass shootings, the country looks for heroes. In Uvalde, Texas, there have been mere humans; some brave, some flawed, some trying their best. And some gravely wrong.

Perhaps some cape-less crusader will emerge in the coming days with a tale of grace and salvation; a narrative to counterbalance the confusion, misstatements, inaccuracies and crushing silences that have managed to heighten the horror of 19 children and two adults killed inside Robb Elementary School. After the experts and the victims testifed Wednesday in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, perhaps a hero will have been revealed, one who looms large enough that we can believe all this gun violence can be stopped.

So we wait.

In the aftermath of mass shootings, local leaders are eager to draw attention to the members of law enforcement who first arrived on the scene. The public is offered a timeline of events, a preliminary ticktock, not of why the mayhem unfolded but of how it was put down. The precise number of minutes it took for police to respond, for the gunman to be killed, for the scene to be secured. We are told that as awful as this event is, it could have been worse. More people could have died. Others could have been injured. This is how it was in Buffalo and in Tulsa. And instead of considering this a matter of luck or God’s blessing, local leaders attribute it to the men and women in uniform who acted with speed, professionalism and fearlessness.

But not in Uvalde. We learned that law enforcement fumbled and hesitated. We’re still learning what happened, but we know this much with certainty: Life’s tragedies are more nuanced and complex than the stories that Hollywood tells. Cinema has trained us to believe that a few good men and women can be counted on to save the day. If they do their jobs and follow the protocol, everything will be fine. But in Uvalde, things went wrong. The police didn’t charge the gunman who was terrorizing the staff and students; they didn’t rush into the classroom. The shooter wasn’t confronted before he entered the building, and the door through which he entered did not appear to be locked. Instead of a narrative about quick and unflinching action as children called 911 begging for help, there were stories about inaction and fear.

There’s no excuse for police officers who fail to do their job. But it’s also worth asking exactly what the country has been demanding of its first responders and teachers and children and, frankly, all its citizens. In the face of gun violence, we are all being tasked with being heroic, with denying our fears and flaws, and to just keep going about our day as if this mayhem is normal. We are demanding that emergency room physicians be miracle workers and repair shattered bones and blasted organs and all the other damage that AR-15-style weapons wreck on civilian bodies. We’re asking police officers to save children — and shoppers and worshipers and partygoers — from mass casualty events that are weekly occurrences, not once-in-a-career tragedies.

We are asking children to be heroes. We are teaching them to barricade themselves in classrooms and dive under desks and play dead and not cry. And if they survive the terror, we expect them to carry on and accept a mass shooting as just part of the school day.

If certain politicians and gun rights advocates have their way, the schools will become temples of high security with bulletproof windows and limited egress and armed guards clearing everyone who enters through metal detectors. These “good guys with guns” must never flinch, must never step away from their post, never become engrossed in their cellphone or a conversation with a colleague. They must not be afflicted with human flaws. They must be white-hat cowboys who are always first to squeeze the trigger in a shootout.

On Tuesday, the actor Matthew McConaughey — gun owner, parent, Uvalde native — swept into the White House in his suit jacket and spectacles for a meeting with the president and then spent some 20 minutes in the White House briefing room delivering a plea for heightened gun regulations using the full-throated charisma of his Texas twang. He came with heartbreaking anecdotes about the children who died; stories about their aspirations and hobbies. He brought photographs of them in moments of joy and powerful words about their families’ grief over children “left not only dead but hollow.” He came with all of his Hollywood sheen. And his words had the allure and cadence of a talented actor, not the drained exasperation of survivors; survivors who are growing tired of hearing themselves repeat the same pleas for gun regulations to no avail.

McConaughey came because he is betting that Americans are as infatuated with celebrities as they are with guns. So maybe he can be a hero, or an impetus or cudgel, and children will no longer have to be.

We are willing to look for heroes almost anywhere we can. We turn to the student activists who emerged after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. We turn to the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. We turn to those who come to Washington to testify and to bear witness. We look to an actor.

But we have long ceased to believe that legislators will show signs of heroism. Finally, in the last weeks, they’ve come to the table to talk, which is to say they have acknowledged that they have a job to do. But after more than 200 mass shootings this year alone, it’s far too late for anyone on Capitol Hill to be a hero. But perhaps this time, there won’t be so many cowards.

Robin Givhan is senior critic-at-large writing about politics, race and the arts. A 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, Givhan has also worked at Newsweek/Daily Beast, Vogue magazine and the Detroit Free Press.