This Is Definitely The Time To Talk About Gun Control
Another horrific day of gun violence in this country, and another day that we are reminded this is “definitely not the time” to talk about gun control. Twenty-year-old Adam Lanza is suspected of entering a school in Newtown Connecticut filled with K- 4th graders, opening fire, and killing 20 children and 6 adults. His father was found dead at his home in Hoboken, New Jersey. It seems he killed his father, travelled to another home and killed another family member, then travelled to the school where his mother worked as a kindergarten teacher. She is one of the victims and it has been speculated that most of the fatalities occurred in her room.
This is a horrible, horrible tragedy. My heart bleeds for these families. I’m a parent, and I simply cannot understand why it is considered disrespectful to demand a conversation about the plague of gun violence on our country, and the necessity for stricter gun control. I’ve already heard on a seemingly endless loop – “today is not the day for that discussion.”
Can someone please tell me when that day will come? When? And why is trying to change policies that make it easier for these types of awful things to take place considered disrespectful to grieving families?
Jeff Goldberg, reporter for the Atlantic, was just on MSNBC speaking about the violence:
”It’s a relatively safe country, given the fact and this is what we have to focus on there are 300 million guns in the United States of America …We are a country that is saturated with guns. So it is somewhat of a miracle that this doesn’t happen more than it does”¦ I don’t know how to explain any of that, except to say that maybe this is the day to talk about those issues. As much as I understand the impulse to say, ”˜this isn’t the day for politics,’ maybe we should be having a frank discussion about how to defend ourselves against this kind of violence how to shape policy so that it doesn’t happen quite as often.”
He’s right. He’s absolutely right. We’ll mourn. We’ll offer our condolences. We’ll remind all of those around us that this “isn’t the time” to talk about our country’s serious problem with gun regulation, and we’ll move on. But these families won’t. They will be destroyed forever.
Not even 5 months have gone by since the last, awful mass shooting in Aurora happened. How much more commonplace will these events become? When will we decide that we have a real problem in this country and actually address it?
Virginia Tech Shooting survivor Colin Goddard told MSNBC today:
”We have to make our decision makers believe as we believe that we are better than this, that we deserve a nation that is better than this, that they can make decisions that will make us all safer in our schools, in our churches, in our daycare centers, on our streets. There are things that we can do that we’re not doing. And it’s past due that we get them done.”
Yes, it is.
A very emotional President Obama just spoke calling for “meaningful action.” I certainly hope he’s referring to some change in policy. This could be his legacy and change things in this country immensely.
(photo: Susan Montgomery/Shutterstock.com)
