Grief, sorrow, anger, horrific visions and frustration are some of the emotions each caring person must have felt after the latest massacre. Innocent children murdered by a teenager wielding multiple firearms, including an assault weapon, and complicated by inept handling by law enforcement.
While it is the massacres that gain attention, we have all sadly seen that gun violence has increased recently whether it be a single shooting or massacre and from my vantage point, there is a shooting every day. And it not just the massacres. What about a kid who finds an unlocked, not stored gun in their home and accidentally pulls the trigger? What about armed gang fights? What about domestic violence? All examples of gun violence. The reasons: guns, their easy accessibility, the lack of responsibility by many of our federally elected officials.
I have been a lifelong gun safety advocate and from an advocate I became an activist after my daughter, a single working mother, was murdered in 2008 by a teenaged burglar in possession of a stolen handgun. That occurred four years before Sandy Hook. The first MOMS DEMAND ACTION march over the Brooklyn Bridge was organized in the spring of 2013 in protest of the massacre and the issue of gun violence. Thousands of people were there. I had the opportunity to speak to a woman who traveled from Oklahoma with her family to attend the march. I asked this woman whether she had lost a loved one. “No,” she said, but continued, “I am here because I am thinking of my grandchildren.”
What are we as a society thinking? What are those federally elected officials thinking? Are they not concerned about the future of their grandchildren? Or is their future only concerned with their misguided interpretation of the Second Amendment and their re-election funding by the NRA? It is amoral.
This is America. We have become a violent, gun-toting nation and the only nation in the world that has been assaulted with such violent and amoral behavior.
It seems to me that those very same elected officials who believe that everyone should carry a gun are the same ones who are against reproductive rights. How can that be rationalized?
Our society can bypass those federally elected officials and work state by state. We can pass background checks, micro-stamping legislation, manufacture “smart” guns, eliminate the gun-show loophole, repeal concealed carry permits, eliminate “stand your ground,” expand the work of “violence interrupters,” and enact legislation against “ghost guns,” invest in community based anti-violence programs and create “consciousness-raising” seminars for the police.
Working state by state is not a perfect solution, but it is a beginning. Enough is really enough.
Lois Schaffer
Great Neck
