How many more babies have to die before this country grows a pair and stops this stupidity around the second amendment?
“Based on the USA Today sample, mass killings involving firearms with four or more people killed occur on average every 12.5 days in the US. Based on the Brady Campaign data, school shootings occur on average every 31.6 days.”
Why are we still reading headlines like this: Massacre in Fourth-Grade Classroom? Why are nineteen fourth-graders dead because an eighteen neighbor of the town they lived in decided he would use his newly purchased assault rifle on innocent children looking forward to their summer vacation?
I could write more why questions, but we know the answers. We understand that the Texas state politicians could care less about Tuesday’s carnage at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. The governor will do his duty and report on the events and issue ‘hearts and prayers’ utterances as standard protocol but will say little and do nothing about the state’s most lax gun laws. For individuals like Gov. Abbott, it’s not about lax gun laws, and no, it will be some twisted contrivance around mental health or whatever bullshit he will utter.
Frankly, there is nothing Abbott can say that will be of comfort to the parents who sent their little ones to school and had every right and expectation they would be safe and come back home to them. There is nothing he can say to nineteen sets of parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents that will make any sense to them or be meaningful. Because all they want to do right now is hold their child in their arms and never let go.
While politicians on both sides of the aisle talk past each other, they ignore a statistical fact about mass shootings: another one will happen within 12–32 days.
Mass killings involving firearms with four or more people killed occur on average every 12.5 days in the US. Based on the Brady Campaign data, school shootings occur on average every 31.6 days.
Which begs the question, why is this such a common occurrence in the United States and not where else? Mental health isn’t the cause because other countries have mental health issues just as much as we do, but not our level of gun violence.
If mental health is an issue, what is a reasonable course of action for states to prevent the continuance of these types of mass murder? I often ask myself; do people who have not lost a loved one to gun violence genuinely want to fix this problem?
President Biden said losing a child is like having part of your soul ripped from you, and it is that and so much more. It places you in a cohort you never imagined for yourself, and everything changes, and the pain never goes away.
You find yourself walking and see someone who reminds you of your son or daughter, and you pause to catch your breath. Or a flash of memories floods your brain, and you are fighting back the tears. Those who you thought were friends distance themselves or stop calling you.
Losing a child at any age is gut-wrenching. But to lose one’s child while attending school, where they are supposed to be safe, is incomprehensible. There is no comprehensive explanation for what took place in Uvalde. None.
I do not know any of the parents of Uvalde or Sandy Hook. Or any of the victims who died at the hands of the degenerate racist who wantonly killed ten people at Tops Supermarket in Buffalo while they shopped. But I do know the pain of losing a child, not through gun violence but from a traffic accident.
I also know their helplessness, and the voices they think they hear are those of their child. Or the uncontrollable crying when walking into their bedrooms. The hollowness of the words friends and family utter as their well-intention attempts to comfort but mean nothing. The dutiful nods or acknowledgment and the forced effort to acknowledge them as helpful. But they are not.
I know there will be those who will utter the words our hearts and prayers are with the parents of Uvalde. I get that may make you feel good. But in reality, it does nothing, and it does nothing for you or them.
However, I fervently believe some want to sit down and cry their eyes out for the children. I say to you. Please do. Weep for them. And when someone asks you why you are weeping, tell them 19 babies died on May 24, 2022, at the hands of an angry 18-year-old boy for no reason.
Through your tears, let them know he did this with a weapon that did so much damage to their young bodies; identification was through descriptions of what they wore to school that day or DNA evidence.
When your friend starts crying with you, and you need to pray to whatever deity you believe in, remember this: every Texas Republican legislator signed on to pass laws that made it easy for this 18-year-old murderer to buy the weapons he did. With no background checks, no waiting period, and no requirement to have training or be licensed. And Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, wants his state to be a leader in gun ownership.
Don’t send your thoughts and prayers. Send lots and lots of letters to your Congressional Reps and the two Senators who represent your state and tell them to get off their fat-asses and stop this before another mass murder happens.
Finally, to you gun owners, who read this and who may be thinking I’m one of ‘those’ who want to take your guns away. No, I don’t. What I would like, is for you to join in helping to keep people like the person who went into the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and murdered those children from owning a gun.
I believe most people are indeed responsible gun owners.
But even responsible gun owners, have a breaking point. How many first, second, third, and fourth graders will it take for the NRA to do what is right? How many people in supermarkets, and shopping malls, are slaughtered by an AR15 will it take for reasonable gun laws to be put in place to put a stop to this needless violence?