Yesterday afternoon in Sparks, Nevada, another school fell
victim to an on-campus shooter.
A beloved math teacher, and veteran, was killed, along with
two students that were injured at the hand of a semi-automatic weapon in the possession
of a 12 year-old student at Sparks Middle School. This 12 year-old would not
survive the afternoon.
In the wake of this tragedy, like those before it, the
debate that again and again rises from the ashes is the one of gun control.
Some say that such tragedies are not the time or place to
discuss gun laws. Some say, that such a national or political conversation
should not come as the cost of preventing communities from healing.
Gun violence is an issue in the United States in a way that
comes nowhere close to any other country in the world.
This tragedy takes places only a week after an Austin, Texas
student killed himself while his classmates looked on.
The Austin tragedy was a little over a month after an attack
in a Winston-Salem, North Carolina high school.
The time between the mass-shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary
School in Newton, Connecticut was a little less than a year ago – the time
between then and now trickled with many more instances of gun violence
involving children and our schools.
When the twenty-six elementary students were killed that
awful day, the national pulse was slowed. The fear, and pain, and heartbreak of
the students at Sandy Hook, and that of their families, and that of their
community are and continue to be unimaginable to so many.
But what about in Texas? In North Carolina? In California?
What about gun violence in metropolitan areas across the
country? What about the poor child that is killed? What about the black child?
What about the child whose parents are receiving social benefits from the
state?
Do those deaths not break those communities? Do hearts go ever
unbroken? Have we become jaded to the headlines and the newscasts?
What hurts me to the core, what breaks my spirit, isn’t the
banter of red states or blue states (although it’s close), it isn’t the NRA or
those in its opposition; it’s not even the endless debate over the intention of
our Founding Fathers: it’s the burden this void, and our systematic failure has
placed on our nation’s children.
No child, not one, should have to be afraid in this way. No
elementary school student, or high school student, or college student. No
student should ever, within their hearts fear that they are in danger while in
the halls of America’s educational institutions.
No parent should ever have to calm the nerves of their
child, who is afraid – not afraid of the spelling bee or their math homework,
but afraid in a very real way that again and again has been validated in our
country.
Something is wrong; it’s broken. And to deny any such thing
is to be blinded to the reality that is far to common – it exists from coast to
coast, in cities and quaint New England towns.
When we turn the discussion of gun control into anything
else but our duty to protect others from this kind of fear, we are hurting only
ourselves, and more obviously our children.
Your right to Constitutional buzzwords will never be worth the life of a child.
This epidemic, this endless heartache needs to come to an end. If I hear one more person tell me that gun
control is ineffective because – “gangsters get their guns illegally anyway…”
I just might scream. The guns being
used in these instances are not coming from the streets; their serial numbers
are not scratched off.
Now’s the time:
End the freeze on gun violence research
Increase emergency response programming in schools
Increase counseling services available to our students
Strengthen background checks on gun sales
Get armor-piercing bullets off the streets
Limit magazines
Increase ban standards on assault weapons
I don’t care what side of the line you stand on. I don’t
care if you have an NRA sticker on the back of your car, or if you sign
petitions to remove ammunition from big box store shelves.
We cannot wait anymore to solve this problem, we can’t
afford it, and our children don’t deserve it. Now is the time to prevent gun
violence.
