According to CNN, in the United States there has been an average of one school shooting per week since January 2018. One. School. Shooting. Per. Week. I want to scream!!! And as horrible as that is, what I think is so much worse is that, as far as I can tell, we, the citizens of the US, have become immune to it. We are accepting this as a way of life now, making Oh-how-horrible comments and then moving on to what’s next in our lives?
Let me ask you something. Humor me for a moment. If I said to you, I am going to put a gun to your child’s head, to your grandchild’s head, to the head of some child you know, would you just ignore me? If I showed up at your house, a place where you believe your child is safe, gun in hand, would you ignore me? What if it were your child that was shot? The outrage of these shootings is being lost on the citizens of the United States, and I am not sure why. Are we so distracted by the insanity of the United States politics that we are not dialed in that children are being shot? Are we busy with entertainment TV that we think someone else will handle it? Are we, the masses who have not had a child shot, able to casually shake our heads and ignore the crisis that is our refusal to address these killings?
And I know there are tons of people who want no part of the Second Amendment altered, but what they do not answer is that they DO want. Okay, you want to have free access to any and all guns. Fine. Now, what do you propose? What do you think we should do about children being shot? I cannot help but wonder if it were your child shot, lying on the floor of the cafeteria, bleeding all over the place, other children running for their lives, falling and tripping on the pool of blood seeping from your child, if you would think that the current gun laws are appropriate.
And, just in case you are wondering, yes, I am fully aware that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. I know. I read the meme. But, at the risk of being completely moronic here, I believe that the people who kill people often do so with GUNS. They have access to guns, so they use them. I cannot imagine how much more obvious this could be. People who want to be manicurists have to have a high school diploma, attend classes at a certified cosmetology school, work 300 hours under the supervision of someone who is already certified, then take and pass a test, all so they can paint people’s nails. Yet, the gun laws wink at requirements. Barely wink.
And, yes I am aware that there are mental health issues to be addressed, but I am not sure why this issue is collapsed with school shootings and gun control. I am guessing that the pro-gun people want us to believe that the issue is a mental health issue not a gun control issue; but excuse me, I believe we have very aptly demonstrated that people with mental health issues can easily access guns, often from the homes of their family members who do not have diagnosed mental health issues. And, if you just do the logic of that, it rolls right back to the need for gun control.
I wonder what would happen if every person who wants the Second Amendment upheld spent a year walking side-by-side with a family who has lost a child to a school shooting or with a family who has had a family member killed by someone with a gun. A year of sitting a breakfasts where the absence of that family member is felt, where the seat where the beloved used to sit remains empty. A year of watching parents try to pull their lives back together, fruitlessly because they will never recover from their loss. A year of watching siblings flail through their lives, grief impossible to even put into words. A year of sitting in classrooms, with teachers trying to teach children who are grieving the loss of classmates, scared to death that they are next.
You think we don’t need gun control? I think you need your head examined!