Sunday Morning Sidewalk: Echoes of Evil, Cries for Hope

 

It has been a long month — one that somehow felt both endless and fleeting. In that time, life has thrown its share of challenges my way: a tragedy at work, the fragile journey of my granddaughter born with esophageal atresia, and another week-long crisis that pulled in our Division Vice President, our President, and our Director of HR.

In between, I’ve tried to keep writing. Football, in its rhythm and constancy, became cathartic. But today I can’t just write about football. I can’t stay neutral, not after what we’ve all witnessed. And truthfully, Oregon head coach Dan Lanning’s courage has guided me here — to speak from conviction, even if it means stepping outside of my comfort zone.

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The Evil We Face

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is more than political violence — it is evil. And it joins a grim list of tragedies: the murders of Melissa and Mark Hortman, the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, the attack on Steve Scalise, the kidnapping plot against Gretchen Whitmer, the massacres in churches and synagogues.

It does not matter what ideology cloaks these crimes. The act of murdering someone for their beliefs, their politics, their color, or their faith is not just violence. It is an attempt to play God, to strip life from those who hold a different view or a different identity. It is evil.

And let me be clear: I disagreed with virtually everything Charlie Kirk had to say. But I respected his right to say it. That’s what the First Amendment is about. It is the very first right in the Constitution for a reason — because without free political speech, all other freedoms erode.

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The Root Cause

But condemnation alone is not enough. These atrocities keep happening. And despite what some claim, the cause is not video games, movies, or television desensitizing us. The research is clear: violent media does not translate into violent crime. Youth violence has plummeted since the 1990s, even as game and streaming consumption exploded.

The common denominator is not desensitization. It is despair. It is untreated mental illness. It is people in crisis who feel like they have nowhere to turn, whose anguish warps their sense of choice until violence becomes thinkable.

Over 54% of adults with mental illness in this country receive no treatment. Suicide accounts for nearly 60% of all firearm deaths. Among mass shooters, nearly 40% show signs of suicidality during their attacks. These aren’t just statistics; they are the proof that untreated mental illness is fueling the gun violence epidemic.

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Lessons from Foster Care — and the Womb

I’ve seen this pattern before. Eight years ago, I wrote a feature on Spencer Webb, a young man who overcame tremendous odds after growing up in foster care. The statistics are staggering: nearly half of foster youth display serious emotional or behavioral challenges. Only half graduate high school. Less than 10% complete college.

But foster care isn’t the starting point of this crisis — it’s just one place where the failure becomes visible. The roots stretch deeper, into the womb itself. When mothers can’t afford prenatal care, when babies are born into toxic stress, when maternal mortality in America is double that of our peers — we are setting children on a path of lifelong vulnerability.

And this is exactly what Robert Sapolsky argues in his book Determined: nothing about our choices happens in isolation. He calls it a “causal chain.” Genes, hormones, prenatal stress, childhood environment, and social conditions all shape the brain and body long before an adult ever picks up a weapon or makes a desperate choice.

• Stress in pregnancy can alter a child’s sensitivity to fear and anxiety.
• Poverty and trauma in childhood can rewire brain circuits for impulse control and emotional regulation.
• By adolescence, those developmental injuries often manifest as depression, substance abuse, or violent behavior.

Yet our society still insists people should just “get over it.” We pretend that sheer willpower can undo decades of biology and environment. Sapolsky’s point — and one we ignore at our peril — is that no one is an island. Mental illness does not just appear one day. It is built link by link, beginning in the womb, reinforced by neglect, and compounded by the absence of care.

This is why mental illness so often goes unaddressed: it is easier for society to shame the person than to admit we failed them from the very beginning.

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Dan Lanning’s Rebuke

That’s why Lanning’s words rang so true. He said:

“It should be really hard for a sick person to have a gun. It should be really hard. And if people can’t see that, on both sides, how disappointing is that?”

And he went further:

“I think the US could learn a lot from our locker room. You’ve got guys of different races, backgrounds, religions — and you’ve got a team that loves each other. We’re missing that in our country. Life matters. I think we’ve lost sight of that.”

What Lanning reminded us is that we do not have to agree to love. We do not have to be the same to respect life. His words cut through the noise: there are sick people, and they need help. And it must be hard — not easy — for them to get a weapon of war.

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Where We Go From Here

This is my plea. We need to recognize that those who glorify violence, who spread hate, who take up arms against their neighbors: they are not warriors, they are not patriots, they are not righteous. They are broken, and they need help — and too often, they never get it.

To policymakers: stop scapegoating games and movies. The evidence does not support it. What does the evidence support? Expanding mental-health care. Enforcing parity. Funding crisis services. Ensuring lethal means are less accessible in moments of crisis.

To my fellow Duck fans: stop pretending this is someone else’s problem. Whether you are red or blue, whether you loved Charlie Kirk or loathed him, life matters. If a football locker room can model respect, then so can we.

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Action Steps We Can Take

If we are serious about breaking this cycle of despair and violence, here is what the evidence tells us works:

• Expand access to mental-health care by enforcing parity laws so insurance companies cannot keep treating mental health as second-class.
• Invest in crisis infrastructure: fully fund 988 hotlines, mobile crisis teams, and stabilization units so people in crisis have somewhere to turn before tragedy strikes.
• Make lethal means less accessible during crises through safe storage campaigns, temporary transfers, and red flag laws (ERPOs) that balance rights with urgent safety.
• Support early and preventive care, especially prenatal and pediatric programs that reduce risk factors long before they turn into crises.
• Adopt behavioral threat assessment models in schools and workplaces that focus on concerning behaviors, not labels, to intervene early and supportively.

The Last Word

We know what works. We know what doesn’t. The only question left is whether we finally have the courage to stop doing nothing.

As for me — I will keep writing. Because words matter. Because respect matters. Because life matters.

And because silence, in the face of evil, is complicity.

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