For the second time in two weeks, we have had a devastating mass shooting in the US. A majority of Americans support stricter gun laws to end gun violence, and we need to pressure our lawmakers to act.
A grim anniversary
Three years ago this week, a friend and I participated in Boston’s March for Our Lives, which drew over 50,000 people to protest gun violence.
One of over 800 local marches in response to the brutal mass shooting at Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, the Boston march took us from Roxbury to Boston Common. We chanted, shouted, and drew strength from each other from being together.
In the wake of witnessing seventeen teachers and fellow students brutally murdered, survivors refused the usual thoughts and prayers and organized one of the anti-gun-violence protest movements in US history. Over two million people across the US marched to demand changes to our deadly gun laws.
These students helped to change the conversation.
But the US still has a massive gun violence problem.
The second mass shooting in two weeks in America
For the second time in two weeks, we’ve had mass shootings bad enough to make the news. Last week’s racially motivated mass murder of Asian women in Georgia, and this week’s mass shooting at a Boulder, Colorado, which resulted in ten people murdered at a grocery store in a city whose assault weapons ban was struck down by a court just ten days before.
Thoughts and prayers
A radical misinterpretation of the Second Amendment, which ignores the well-regulated militia beginning of the sentence, forced on us by the gun lobby and the Republican party they hold captive, has stymied any attempt at common-sense gun reform. The US has more gun violence than much of the world, and we keep acting like there’s nothing we can do about it.
We sacrifice first graders on an altar of guns.
Every time there is a mass shooting in this country, the Right comes out and says that now is not the time to talk about gun laws. They offer up “thoughts and prayers,” as though that’s all anyone with political power can do. Blah, blah, blah, Second Amendment. Freedom. Eagles. Distract until the news cycle changes.
I am sick of it. And I am not alone.
Americans want stricter gun laws
In the years since the brutal murder of first graders and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a majority of Americans are dissatisfied with our gun laws and want them to be stricter.
We have a right to go about our lives without someone, often a white male, with access to the technology of mass murder turning it on us. We have a right to go for walks, to go to the grocery store, to go to school, to live.
Call your representatives and senators and donate
I have called my representative and my senators, again, as I do on a regular basis, demanding that they push for gun control. They agree with me. If you live in the US, please do the same, especially if your representation does not support it. Keep it up. Make sure that they know that this is a key issue for you.
Several organizations work to end gun violence. I donate to Everytown for Gun Safety
And talk about this issue.
We can end this.
