No parent should ever have to receive a text like this. [Thursday, November 20th], a gunman opened fire inside a campus library at Florida State University, injuring at least three people. This was the 91st school shooting since Newtown. When will Congress act?
The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school seems like such a long time ago, but it hasn’t even been two years. Since then, there have been 91 school shootings…and Congress steadfastly refuses to take action. Before gun advocates attempt to tear me a new one, yes, I realize that not all of these shootings would have been prevented by background checks or other gun control measures. That shouldn’t be taken to mean that doing nothing is the proper action. The appropriate reaction to children and other innocents being killed or injured isn’t to sit on your hands and pretend there’s nothing we can do.
Samuel Wurzelbacher (“Joe the Plumber”)- that Conservative poster boy for compassion and reason, wrote recently that “As harsh as this sounds - your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.” Yes, he couched this harsh sentence in suitably flowery language designed to camouflage the reality that he values his gun rights more than the live of innocent children. THIS is the sort of widespread attitude that will continue to enable the random massacre of children. When you value guns more than life itself (as long as it’s the life of someone you don’t know and love), you’re a pretty sorry excuse for humanity.
No parent should receive a text from their child advising their life may be at risk. How many more times will this sort of thing happen? How many more children will be buried by parents because gun advocates like Wurzelbacher value their guns more than life itself? It’s not about protecting his family, because when a child is in school, there parents aren’t usually in the vicinity. For Wurzelbacher, it’s not about protecting children or loved ones; it’s about screaming about “gun-grabbing Liberals” every time someone tries to interject some reason and common sense into the debate over gun control.
How many more school shootings will it take? How many more children and teachers will have to die? When will common sense and the recognition that doing nothing is no longer an option finally carry the day? When will gun nuts like Wurzelbacher recognize the reality that the 2nd Amendment is not a blank check? That it doesn’t guarantee an American the right to carry whatever firepower he/she chooses whenever and wherever he/she chooses to carry it? And that they shouldn’t get to continue to selectively interpret it because it suits their agenda?
An armed society is not a safe or polite society; it’s a society on the verge of becoming a free-fire zone.
Ninety-one school shootings. When will enough be enough?
