I've been too heartsick to mention that two days ago the assault weapons ban wasn't included in the Senate gun control/regulation/safety (whatever sounds less threatening to the NRA?) bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said there weren't enough votes to pass the bill if it included the assault weapons provisions. I've read and heard enough to feel confident that was the case, meaning not enough votes. So, it will be an amendment to another bill.
Seems any attempts to ban rapid-fire magazines have little chance of passage either. (Do NOT change the subject again, Wayne LaPierre, by saying gun control advocates need to become educated on terminology). Assault weapons and multiple bullet magazines have figured prominently in nearly all the mass killings in this country over the past several years, the most recent big being Newtown. I don't need to go into more detail than that. Everybody knows what I'm talking about when I say Newtown and when I say rapid-fire or multiple-bullet cartridges for guns. I don't want to become proficient in the vocabulary of gun violence.
I am sad and angry—on so many levels. Where are the public servants (members of Congress, specifically) willing to take the risk of losing the next election in order to DO THE RIGHT THING? Anyone there who's in a "red" district (Dems included) willing to lose their seat in an effort to protect children and human beings of all ages from being murdered, massacred by guns? Come on, people!
My father was a longtime state legislator. He was a man with a moral compass—what I would call a moral compass. That doesn't mean he didn't have flaws; he was very human and made mistakes as we all do. But when faced with a situation in his district where the county schools were condemned because of structurally dangerous buildings, where the valedictorian in one of them couldn't get into the state college with the lowest entrance requirements? He knew very well how unpopular the idea—much less the reality—of school consolidation was. Still, he couldn't have lived with himself if he had shrugged his shoulders and ignored it—or appointed some study group (the same as ignoring it, for a while at least). He knew very well it was not only possible, but probable, that taking action to consolidate the county schools would cost him the next election. And it did.
He had moved up in seniority and was in position to chair a major committee after the next election. A really sweet temptation, I imagine. But still he did the right thing. I remember it as a sad night at our house. As if someone had died. I remember my boyfriend's father not allowing him to use the family car to drive to our house—he wasn't happy with my father's action. But his son walked across town to hold my fourteen-year-old hand. And many friends and neighbors also came to console and urge my father to run four years later.
During the next campaign he'd say he was out of the Senate four years for health reasons: "The voters got sick of me." Lucy's papa had a great sense of humor up until the day he died four years ago. I was proud of him for being courageous, for putting children and their education before his own best interest.
Understand, I disagreed with him on some issues, mostly environmental. He grew up during the Depression; his father literally lost the farm. So he wasn't hard to convince that certain environmental regulations would put people out of work. Seeing people employed and able to take care of their families trumped most everything with him. It was a position I wasn't thrilled with, sometimes even was ashamed of—but I wasn't ashamed of him. He had the courage to do the right thing when he knew for sure what the right thing WAS.
How could every member of the U. S. House and U. S. Senate NOT know what the right thing is when it comes to gun regulation? How in the hell can they sleep at night? I can't imagine.
I say all this to neutralize some of my anger. And to ask you to please call your senators and OTHER members of Congress, as many as you are willing to call. Let them know they need to find the courage to "vote right"f or the children and teachers at Sandy Hook School and all the other people who have lost their lives to senseless gun violence.
No comments:
Post a Comment