For me, a line was drawn in the sand today, drawn with the blood of 27 humans murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. In the peaceful town of Newtown, Connecticut. Children ages 5-10 attend school there, Grades K-4.
I imagine there was nothing unusual in the way the morning started on what seemed an ordinary Friday in mid-December. Parents no doubt nagging the kids to finish their cereal, locate their homework, and hurry, hurry before the bus—
Don’t you suppose that’s what went on in households around the school this morning? Before 9:30, that is, when the shooter showed up. He had multiple guns and a whole lot of bullets, enough to kill twenty-seven people. Twenty children, six adults and the shooter, age twenty-four.
Raise your hand if your thoughts didn’t flash back to Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, the Amish schoolhouse, and the mall shooting near Portland, Oregon—wasn’t that just last week? Violence is violence. Death is death. Still, it cuts deeper when most of the victims are children. The trauma for the young survivors is unimaginable. No doubt it will affect them the rest of their lives, having their innocence ripped away like that, in seconds.
President Obama struggled to keep his emotions under control in a moving statement to the Nation this afternoon. He is a father, after all, and a man of empathy.
I’m declaring my personal line in the sand, my political purpose in the days ahead: I will give my best efforts toward the passage of serious gun control laws. It’s time for thinking Americans—and Americans capable of feeling the pain of loss, yes, even other people’s loss—to pull together. It’s time for voices ordinarily quiet to be raised in unison against the merciless bully that is the NRA. Actually it’s way past time.
Point of clarification: Apparently some members of the National Rifle Association favor closing the gun show loophole and strengthening background checks. That's all good. It's the NRA money that gives the organization control over so many of our elected officials, especially Republicans in Congress. Members of Congress receiving substantial NRA support at election time dare not cross this powerful group. To do so can mean losing the next election. What I'm ready to see is people reclaiming power. You and me. No one organization should have so much power that it trumps the safety, the lives, of human beings. As individuals, few of us have the financial resources available to the NRA; the thing to remember is the NRA is an organization of individuals. Those of us who care about a safer country, a country that's far less fear-based, can band together, combine coalitions for change. We must.
I’ll write more about gun control tomorrow. Tonight let’s join hearts and send healing thoughts and prayers for everyone affected by today’s tragedy. Truly that would be all of us; we are all One, even when we forget.
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