Ever Again
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
The leading cause of death among children in the United States is lawmakers who care more for their own jobs than for the lives of other people’s kids.
Three more children — third graders — were slaughtered in Tennessee today with military weapons because so many of our legislators thrive on donations from gun rights groups to keep those weapons handy to anyone with a grudge.
When children that age are supposed to be learning multiplication and division, what’s a noun and what’s a verb, instead today they are learning how to grieve for playmates and how to face fears they may be next to die.
Every United States Senator, every Representative, every state legislator who has opposed banning these weapons of mass destruction is an aider and abettor to the murder of these children, to the murders of all the children, all the adults shredded year after year.
None has lost a child — rather, not their own child — to their political greed.
Every one of them should be forced to attend the funerals of three nine-year-olds of Tennessee and watch the hopes of the parents lower slowly into the ground.
31 March 2023 @ 5:44 pm
Other parts of the world (such as Australia) look at America in horror. My 13 year old (who does not regularly watch the news, so it’s not an obsession) expressed the view a while ago that he never wants to go to America. I asked him why. He said it’s because he doesn’t want to get shot.
We had a terrible mass shooting in Australia 20 years ago; there was a national moratorium and thousands of weapons were handed in. Licensing laws were tightened. The whole country got behind it. We’ve had only one, nationally (four people died), since. I’m sure it’s widely known in the US but here’s an article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/15/it-took-one-massacre-how-australia-made-gun-control-happen-after-port-arthur
I feel for you.
31 March 2023 @ 12:23 pm
The first time I volunteered in my son’s kindergarten class this year they had an “active shooter drill”. I was alarmed; the children were not. I don’t know what was more upsetting- the drill, or the fact that this was business as usual for the kids. Only two of the 18 appeared visually upset.
My husband owns many guns for hunting, including AR 15s. I’ve been both a public defender and as a prosecutor. I tend to look at both sides of an argument.
When I asked my husband about gun control, he said this: banning them will only keep them out of the hands of people who follow the law. It will not rid criminal’s ability to get them illegally. He also mentioned the citizen’s ability to fight against a tyrant government, made up of these individuals who care more about their jobs than our kids.
I find both sides compelling; I honestly don’t know what the answer is, but would be curious to know your thoughts on my husband’s arguments.
31 March 2023 @ 12:54 pm
I’m guessing your husband is a fine hunter who rarely needs more than one bullet to bring down a deer. Probably doesn’t need the thirty an AR-15 affords. Most of the people killing kids with this style of weapon aren’t career criminals; I don’t mind making it harder for people with already damaged mental capacity to maximize slaughter. Democracies already offer a terrific weapon against a tyrant government: the ballot box.
31 March 2023 @ 1:03 pm
The reason criminals are able to get their hands on guns is because there are so many guns in the U.S. and so little control over who has them. We make no serious effort to insure that only responsible adults are able to acquire and keep guns.
Our children are dying because of American’s obsession with the idea that guns make us safer. In the U.S. guns kill more children under 18 years old than any other cause of death.
Our children are dying because Congress is so easily bought off by gun manufacturers and so easily manipulated by testosterone poisoned lobbyist.
All this is sickening. I don’t know what the solution is, but I am sure it is not to continue on the path we have followed in the past 30 or so years. A good start would be to study the health and safety impact of guns, something which is prohibited now thanks to the gun lobby. Another good start would be to study what other nations have done.