When we send our children to school in the morning, we assume they will come home with homework, stories of what happened in biology class or how they can’t stand a particular teacher for this or that attitude or behavior. Whatever state our children return home in, we expect that they will be coming home after the school day is finished. What we Do Not expect is that they will never come home again, because they are dead or wounded due to another student coming to school with a gun and mindlessly firing it inside the school building at other students, teachers and school staff. Today, there are more parents grieving the senseless death of their precious children because it has happened again! In Kentucky, at Marshall County High School, 2 students are dead and another 16 wounded because a fifteen-year-old came to school with a gun and opened fire. Unfortunately, these school shootings no longer make the front page of the news or the lead story that cable television covers for hours at a time. The victims are no longer made known to the public nor their community descended upon by the national media. School shootings have become so commonplace that most of us don’t even realize that in the first few weeks of the New Year, we have already had 11 school shootings.
Are we losing the battle for decency, morality and the belief that the lives and safety of our children, families and communities are sacred in the United States of America? Do we still care about sensible gun control or legislation that will require simple background checks in order to purchase guns? Have we been derailed in our struggle for peace and justice? Our Declaration proclaims “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” for ALL of us, the gun owner and the anti-gun proponent alike. It is amazing that if the current trend continues, by the end of 2018 we could be looking at over 120 school students dead and 100s of others seriously wounded due to disgruntled, mentally ill, or disenfranchised people randomly shooting guns into crowded school buildings. It is frightening that the most current school shooting has literally flown under the radar with barely an outcry from the greater community. Let us not become so distracted by the circus that is happening in Washington, DC, the Resistance, and the #MeToo Movement that we dismiss as insignificant the number of school shootings that have already taken place in the first month of 2018.
The culture of violence in our country and the rage of (predominately) young males have put us on a certain road to death and destruction if we do not persist in the struggle to change our culture and actively engage in an Intervention. Common Sense Gun Legislation is absolutely necessary as well as addressing mental health as a public health concern. Both must become a priority, or we are destined to continually be burying our children just because they went to school one day and could not get out of the way of shots fired from a gun, instead of from a point guard shooting a 3-pointer at the basketball game.
