How many times have we heard a grieving and devastating mother saying, “We can’t ever allow this to happen again.” I just heard another, from Uvalde, TX, saying it again.
How many times has that grief-stricken plea gone unheeded? How many times does this have to happen? Why aren’t we all on the same page and doing whatever we have to do prevent kids being murdered in schools and people being killed in their places of worship, supermarkets, and other gathering places? Why is this possibly a polarizing issue? Why does the gun lobby have, led by the corrupt NRA, wield such power over our legislators?
There are simply too many guns in the wrong hands. Gun violence incidents beyond these mass shootings are out of control. And? We do nothing about it.
I thought we might actually do something after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on February 14, 2021 in Parkland, Florida. There was an impressive movement led by students of Stoneman Douglas that, I am guessing, just petered off due to the collective deaf ears of Congress and the Florida legislature.
We are in a repetitive cycle of being shocked, dismayed, and abhorred each time one of these mass shootings happens. There are calls to do something. Then, it dissipates. It goes away. People get back to their lives and nothing happens. When the next shooting inevitably happens, the cycle begins anew. This is crazy. It speaks horribly of our country and our society.
I am not against guns. I own two. I am not a hunter but enjoy target shooting. I respect the notion of the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” But, let’s face it, that amendment was ratified in 1791 when muskets and flintlock pistols were the only personal arms. It is a more densely populated country today with personal firearms that the crafters of the 2nd Amendment were not even fathoming when they wrote and ratified that amendment.
President Biden said, “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” When indeed? It is a complex problem and both sides are wrong. I cannot imagine that we cannot figure this out if we united and seriously tackled the problem. As I type this, one extreme is disparaging Biden, adamant about their right to bear arms like it was 1791 or the Wild West, and coming up with bizarre conspiracy theories that started after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting (npr.org). The other extreme wants to eliminate all guns which is equally absurd and has no chance of happening. We cannot even limit the kind of guns that people have right to bear.
Governor Abbot of Texas was asked if he supported any gun control laws. He responded:
I know people like to try to oversimplify this. There are 'real gun laws' in NY. There are real gun laws in California. I hate to say this but there are more people who were shot every weekend in Chicago than in schools in Texas.
He is right and wrong. Gun violence and murder of every ilk needs to be addressed and solved. No child should ever be murdered whether sitting in a classroom or a church by a mass shooter or just walking down the street or sitting on their porch by stray bullets from gang violence. As The Everymom graphic says, “Parents should be able to send their children to school without having to worry about if they'll see them again.” We have to fix this. We cannot allow the amount of people killed by gun violence each year. Our country has to be better than this.
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