WHY ARE WE STILL DEBATING GUN CONTROL?
A Society that tolerates the murder of its children is not civilized
My brother lives in Parkland, Florida. For years, when anyone asked him (or me) where he lived, he had to go to great lengths to explain that Parkland was a lovely suburban community near Coral Springs. That he was in northern Broward County where the weather was beautiful most of the year. He would talk about the excellent school system. The diversity of the population. The beauty of the area. How it was a great place to raise your kids. That all changed on Valentine’s Day of 2018. Now, the mention of Parkland receives an awkward pause. A solemn sigh. A sympathetic, closed eye-head nod followed by: “how are you all doing?” and “what a terrible tragedy”. Now everyone knows where Parkland is.
It’s amazing what a mass school shooting will do. Parkland now finds itself linked to other communities of infamy like, Newtown, Connecticut, Columbine, Colorado and Santa Fe, Texas (just to name an unfortunate few). Places where innocent young children were executed. Places that are no longer known for the quality of their schools or the value of their homes but for the tragedy that occurred there. Places that have become Exhibit A — Z of the uniquely American Tragedy of gun violence.
Fortunately, no one in my brother’s family was directly impacted by the events of February 14, 2018. My niece and nephew had already graduated from Stoneman Douglas and were living in a different part of the state. My brother and sister-in-law were at work. But they have many friends that were directly affected. Friends that lost children that day. Families that were torn apart forever. As residents of Parkland they share in the communal grief of the neighborhood. On a daily basis they drive past the memorials set up outside the school. Their lives are now inextricably connected to the horrific tragedy that occurred that day. There is an overhang of sadness that seeps into their lives when they least expect it.
My brother and his wife were recently on a tour in Cuba. Their tour guide, a young Cuban woman took them all around Havana. They were able to see the results of years of isolationism. How impoverished the country is. They witnessed food rationing and inconsistent electricity. They told me that you couldn’t help but feel bad for the people that lived there. You might think that we Americans have everything that they don’t. We have abundant food and resources. We live in modern communities and drive new model cars that have Wi-Fi access and Apple Play. We have Smart TVs and Amazon. We have freedom of religion and freedom of speech. But we also send out kids to school without knowing if they will be coming back home. We have active shooter drills in our schools. Our 10-year old’s know what to do when they hear the “bang-bang” of a weapon. My brother’s tour guide, a Cuban woman in her early thirties who has never traveled outside of her country, knew all about Parkland. Knew all about the terrible events that happened that fateful day in February 2018 when 17 people were killed. He did not have to explain, even to her, where Parkland was.
While I am not drawing a comparison between life in Cuba and life in America, I am saying that the fact that we continue to tolerate mass shootings, including those of young children, is the single greatest failure in the history of this country. It is what sets us apart from the rest of the world. Even Cuba.
Our inability to take any substantive action to stop this horrible epidemic is nothing short of a national tragedy. It is a self-inflicted wound that has been allowed to grow deeper and deeper by greedy, self-righteous, backward thinking politicians, who hide behind an outdated and misinterpreted section of the Constitution that has no relevance in today’s society. The safety of our children must come before the blind adherence to a few sentences that were put together over 200 years ago by men (not gods), who believed that governments could not be trusted and that communities should have the right to defend themselves against tyrants. King George III was not a first grader at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 when 26 innocents were slain. The British Government was not trying to reclaim Virginia when 49 people were shot at Virginia Tech in 2007. The nascent American government wasn’t trying to take away land and force its citizens into forced labor when 13 were killed at Columbine High School in 1999. No. What happened on those days had nothing to do with “forming a militia”. Had nothing to do with defending privately owned property. What happened on those days was that mentally unstable young men were able to obtain, through mostly legal means, military style weapons. The weapons they acquired were, in some cases, capable of firing over 13 rounds per second; nearly 800 per minute. The type of weapon that has no purpose, other than its ability to kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. These same mentally unstable young men were then able to enter school property whereupon they begin to open fire randomly spraying bullets and ending young innocent lives. That is what happened. There is nothing in the Second Amendment that addresses that.
This must end. The debate over guns in this country has gone on much too long. As a parent and grandparent, I do not understand why this argument continues. I do not understand why we allow our elected officials, those that we put in power through our votes and support with our tax dollars, to offer nothing more than “thoughts and prayers” after yet another tragic mass shooting. I honestly thought, naively as it turns out, that Sandy Hook would be the turning point for this debate. It was unimaginable to me that a civil society would allow 5 and 6 year old’s to be murdered in their school building without a meaningful change being made to gun laws and the power of the NRA. Yet, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit corporation formed in 2013 to provide free online public access to accurate information about gun-related violence in the United States, since Sandy Hook, there have been over 290 school shootings, resulting in at least 140 deaths. If you broaden the scope to include all mass shootings (shootings with at least 4 victims), there have been over 2,043 since Sandy Hook, according to this same study.
After each of these tragic events, after the litany of thoughts and prayers are offered, you will hear the roar about “responsible gun ownership” and how “guns don’t kill people; people kill people”. While I acknowledge that every one of these incidents involved a person pulling the trigger, they also all involved a trigger attached to a weapon of death. I further believe that “responsible gun owner” is an oxymoron. To me, that’s like having a Black Momba snake in your house. You own something that is capable of killing quickly, efficiently and randomly. That doesn’t sound very responsible to me. Just like owning the Black Momba will increase the likelihood of accidental death in your house, owning a gun puts you and your family at risk. According to the Center for Disease Control’s National Health Statistics, for the years 2006–2016, nearly 7,000 people in the U.S. died from accidental shootings. Accidental gun deaths occur mainly in those under the age of 25. In 2014 alone, 2,549 children (age 0–19) died by gunshot and an additional 13,576 were injured. According to GunPolicy.org, in America, there are two accidental shooting deaths for every one justified shooting death. This notion that a “good guy with a gun” will defeat a “bad guy with a gun” is a tragically flawed narrative and one that will only lead to more deaths.
I was encouraged last year, after the Parkland tragedy, at the way the young men and women of this country took to the streets to protest the inaction by the government. I was inspired by their passion. I believed that they represented the future and that they would force change. Yet, as each day has passed since then, and we witness yet another tragedy in places like Pittsburgh, Charlotte, and just this week Highland Ranch, Colorado, I become more and more discouraged. We seem incapable of making the kinds of changes necessary to make our society safer.
A society that tolerates the murder of their young children is not civilized.
A society that allows itself to be controlled by a few, wealthy, selfish people is not a democracy. We have a responsibility to our children and grandchildren to make this country safe. To make going to school about learning math and science and the arts. Not about learning how to survive an active shooter. We must elect officials who are willing to take the bold and necessary steps to get guns out of people’s houses. Completely. This will be hard. Guns have been part of our culture for well over 200 years. Sending men to the moon and having them return safely to earth was also hard. Sending our troops to Europe to defeat the Nazis was also hard. It doesn’t need to be easy. It just needs to be possible.
Maybe if we come together as a society and recognize that the safety and security of our children is more important than limiting the unabated rights of gun owners, we can make some progress. Maybe places like Newtown and Columbine can become known as the places where changes began to take root. Maybe when my brother tells people that he is from Parkland, they will say, “thanks for helping change this country.”
