I am sick and tired of having my heart broken as another and then another person with a legal assault gun mows down young, innocent children in our public schools.
I'm sick of the Republicans in congress blocking any kind of gun safety laws. They say gun laws don't work (I'm calling out you, Ted Cruz, and Mitch McConnell, and your ilk), yet all we have to do is look at other countries. Common sense gun laws do work! That's why no other developed country has the epidemic of mass school shootings that America does. School children in so many other countries are safer than American school children.
These same Republican legislators have a fetish about the unborn child, but do they seem to care about the children we already have in America? I can't see it. And how perverted and hypocritical is that? They block gun laws, health care for all, food assistance, funding for early childhood education and college education. They block anything and everything that could make American children's lives better. Republicans don't seem to care about our living, breathing children at all. Just look at Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, where the latest shooting happened. He points his finger at everyone but himself, yet he is the one who loosened gun laws in that state.
Thank God for President Biden, a man of compassion and common sense, who wants to see these brutal killings stop. But he can't do it alone. For much of two decades now, Mitch McConnell has been the man who is really shaping America. He does it, not by having the best argument to win people over, but by blocking the American legislative process at every turn. McConnell has turned Congress into an institution that does nothing. Absolutely nothing (except, of course, approve extremist right wing judges and justices). All while the American people need a functional Congress in so many ways that have to do with their everyday survival, safety and welfare.
The schools have done about all they can, and still we have more school shootings than any other country in the world. At Uvalde, the police were there for more than an hour, standing around, or keeping parents away from the school, while the children were shot. The children were calling 911 and begging the police to come save them. We can’t imprison every person who might shoot up schools. We have militarized and shut down schools as much as we safely can.
It’s clear to me that gun laws are the answer— the only answer left. Consider: Some mental illness in young men typically manifests between 18 and 21. Change the age for buying guns to 21. It's a no-brainer. An absolute no-brainer. And assault guns? C’mon. No one needs them, and the people who think they have to have them because they fear becoming a minority is just crazy conspiracy theory. Crazy. I will say this to gun-worshippers: just because you don’t want assault rifles restricted means nothing to me. Nothing. Your ‘freedom’ is a child’s death. Your freedom does not trump their freedom to live. Stop being so heartlessly selfish. Don’t tell me the answer is anything but to have common sense gun laws.
So why won’t the far right support gun laws? Years ago a casual friend showed me the arsenal in his trunk. He was a conspiracy theorist. The right is preparing militias, planning to fight a second civil war to prevent their ‘replacement.’ That’s why they want assault rifles: they’re planning war. War against a phantom idea, but war that could kill many of their fellow-Americans.
That is just plain evil.
I am sick at heart that another 19 beautiful children, full of love and joy for life, so like our own beloved children and grandchildren, are gone. I am sick at heart for their families. Those children are gone forever. Those families will never be the same. And it doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way . . .