And The Children Shall Lead Them, Gun Violence Is America’s Shame

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When I gave birth to my son, my vow to him was unspoken. I never had to say to myself that I would love, protect and guide him through the years where he needs me, and give him freedom when he doesn’t. As he grows, I keep that promise by telling him about the world without filters, and trying to explain why this place is sometimes scary and confusing. I show him ways that I try to make life better for him but also others, and I help him learn the value of sometimes putting others before ourselves.

What I can’t explain to him is why school is now an American battlefield. I can only tell him to stay away from people who mistreat others. I tell him that should anything like Apalachee, Georgia happen at his school, he just needs to hide, to try to survive. It angers me that it’s a conversation I have to have. I imagine he is confused why it’s even possible that something like this could happen.

When our children look at us in 20 years, the anger they will feel when year after year we did absolutely nothing to protect them from losing their friends to gun violence is still inconceivable. If they survive themselves, they will be furious knowing that we watched news report after news report, and did nothing to stop it.

Christians, who proselytize their god to us and claim that he is the way and the light of salvation, sit on their folded hands and bibles, shouting the praises of the Lord and doing nothing to save their own children from the weapons that live alongside many of them in their homes. Many of them devoutly vote for a party that tells them their children's lives are shrapnel fodder — inconsequential.

The violence of another school shooting by a child in Georgia who never should have had access to a high powered weapon, Americans will quickly forget because it doesn’t have a face they can demonize. It has their ‘face.’ It isn’t Southside Chicago or the streets of West Louisville so they won’t blame it on ‘a violent culture’ or ‘thugs.’

We know who they are.

We also know who we are that have been begging for action with little result because the leaders of our government are terrified of pissing off the people holding our nation hostage with guns. But we’re no better.

We’re all complicit in this experiment called America and we need to take drastic measures to force a correction. The problem with some of these actions is that we’re held in that same hostage situation. If we force a boycott of low cost gun sellers like Walmart, we risk poor Americans losing access to fresh food. For some, it’s the only outlet they have with fresh groceries.

So do we keep begging? Do we wait for the children?

“The wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling[s] together;

and a little child will lead them.” Isaiah 11:6

We can’t wait for the babies to lead us because what is more likely is that they will be so hurt and traumatized that we’re going to see a spike in trauma-related self injury and harm first. Certainly, they will be angry that we did nothing but they may not have the vocabulary for it. This child, the shooter, was only 14. He needed help. The adults around him failed. The politicians that made guns so very accessible also failed.

So what do we do?

We can vote with seriousness and stop watching and arguing over clown shows.

We can also have conversations with our children that could save their lives, and the lives of their friends. We can teach them to be angry and to speak to us about that anger without fear of retaliation, and we can be adult enough to hear them and consider them.

If your child tells you they don’t like living with guns, what do you do?

So many gun owners live fearing the imaginary home invasion (while living in the middle of nowhere or in some posh subdivision) while children are, on the daily, walking into schools with the real fear of violent threats from a classmate or teacher who is only an opportunity away from erupting in violence.

Our values are nonsense and we consistently rationalize the arguments against strict gun control with a piece of paper written centuries ago. A piece of paper that has had many revisions.

Republicans have written a “Project 2025” proposal that will threaten many of the rights Americans hold dear and yet, we’re tap dancing on the other side of the aisle about securing our schools, neighborhoods and public spaces against weapons and the people who want to use them for mass murder.

I don’t know how many kids we need to lose before it’s too many but is it now, after Apalachee?

If no, then when? How many kids? Does it need to be your kid before you act?

Stop being afraid of gun lobbyists and Republicans screeching about the right to bear arms when our kids' right to a safe life should be, and is more important. Our kids represent the future of our nation and we are letting that be blasted away by weapons that have no place in any society.

For one, I can’t hear another report about a child dying or a child killing another child and continue to act like it is normal to live with guns the way we do in America.

All over the world, our love affair with violence is baffling. When I travel, and can walk in the streets of major cities at night without fear of violence of any kind, I am confused how we have learned to just accept, to rationalize and live with this kind of risk, and do nothing to change it.

I have no answers to offer but I hope that somewhere, somehow, lawmakers finally see a way to begin taking real action. The actions that families all over this country have been desperately seeking. Maybe it will happen without the loss of another child and I certainly hope that it happens before the lack of care about high-powered weapons finds their families and their children. Perhaps, that’s what it takes for any change to really happen.

The French didn’t end their revolution with talks over coffee. Is that what America needs? How long do we let people in power convince us that our families are collateral?

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