It will happen tomorrow on the subway. If not there then it will happen when you reach work. Your co-worker or your boss will lean across your desk and say, “Isn't it awful?”
“What's awful?” you'll ask.
He or she will point to a computer screen and say, “This.” You'll see an image of complete pandemonium. People seen from overhead, perhaps from a helicopter, running like little frightened dots on a Google map.
But it will be real. It will be America's next mass shooting.
You'll see the headlines and breaking news alerts on every screen in the nation. It's happening again. It'll happen again soon.
I wonder how long we're going to live this stupidly, this carelessly, this hopelessly?
If you're convinced that nothing can be done, it’s because the gun lobby spent $8.5 million in 2015 in an effort to convince you.
Does that seem like a lot? Well, would it surprise you to hear that the NRA and the Gun Owners of America organizations have together poured nearly $81 million into House, Senate and presidential races since the 2000 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
That's a lot of favors to call in. That's probably why, when the votes on the most far reaching gun control legislation to reach the Senate in 20 years were about to be taken (and national polls showed 90 percent of Americans supported background checks for every gun purchase) nothing happened.
The Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 was also defeated in the Senate on April 17, 2013.
When the clerk called the roll, the crucial amendment – the one requiring background checks for gun sales at shows, or via classified ads or on the internet -- got just 54 votes in favor, six votes short of the 60 vote super-majority needed. Color me shocked.
This vote, by the way, was just four months after the unhinged Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
You probably have not have read about the sheer cruelty of his actions on that day. I don't blame you if you didn't have the stomach to learn about them, but I really think you should, because he's the best argument in favor of gun control you could ever possibly read.
The only survivor of the massacre, a six-year-old girl, was found by police in the classroom following the shooting. She had hidden in one of the corners of the classroom's bathroom and played dead.
When her mother picked her up, she said, “Mommy, I'm okay, but all my friends are dead.” She described the shooter as “a very angry man.”
By last month 550 American children died from gunshots since the Sandy Hook massacre. They weren't your kids, you probably didn't know any of them, you likely didn't experience the heartbreak, it probably wasn't your soul that was cored out and set ablaze forever. Move on.
Adam Lanza's mother was a self-described gun enthusiast who owned at least a dozen firearms. She often took him to a local shooting range and had him learn how to shoot. She was also the first person he killed on the day of the massacre, with one of her own guns.
The guns were acquired legally and were registered. Among her cache of weapons were two traditional hunting rifles, two handguns and a semiautomatic rifle similar to the kind used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Her son took the two handguns and the semiautomatic to the school.
Lanza’s developmental disorder had seen him drop out of high school. Some of his former classmates said they had been told he had Asperger’s syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism. But what someone with his obvious mental issues was doing with access to a house full of high powered weapons is a question that his mother is no longer around to answer.
When the GOP presidential candidates take the podium again this spring they will each outdo one another to list their pro-life credentials. But how can anyone claim to be pro-life when they witness these endless massacres and simply turn away without responding?
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