To all the politicians who vote against sensible gun laws supported by most Americans, and to all the judges who rule such laws unconstitutional because of some perverted interpretation of the 2nd amendment: I wish I could take every one of you and confront you with the consequences of your cowardice and indifference.
I want you to have to accompany the first responders kneeling in pools of blood by torn-up bodies, deciding which children they might be able to save and which are already dead.
I want you to have to stand in the operating room for hours, next to surgeons trying desperately to put a child’s organs back together, while transfusions struggle to replace the blood still flowing out.
I want you to lean over the table while a funeral director tries to make enough sense of the shattered remains of a child that her family can have something to mourn over at her funeral.
Then I want you to show up at the funeral, and try to explain why this sacrifice is essential to protect a 2nd amendment right to arm every person in this country, regardless of age or history of DUI or domestic violence or mental state, with any weapon of their choice, including a weapon designed to tear a soldier’s body irreparably apart in battle.
You are not allowed to say the words “thoughts and prayers” once, in any of this. No thoughts or prayers will put these children back together again, or heal the devastated lives of their families, or take the nightmares and fears away from those who survived the carnage.
If there is a hereafter, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” I lack the power to impose such a penance on you. But I have a voice and a vote, and I will use them, with all my heart and soul, to send you to a powerless, ignominious, unloved and unregarded place out of our government and into the dustbin of history.
