I am trying to compose myself after viewing photos and videos from mass shootings that were released last week by the Washington Post. I am a visual person who has to see things with my own eyes to fully understand their impact. It was brutally difficult to keep my eyes on the actual horror of what happened to innocents in massacres inside classrooms, synagogues, movie theaters, and outdoor concerts. We can read the words that describe such horrors and never fully feel the impact of terror reeked upon those present in such terrible moments. It’s too easy to quickly move on and pretend that there is nothing we can do to stop the senseless murder that plagues our nation like no other place on earth. It is important that we get a visceral sense of what really happens when a shooter armed with a high powered weapon takes out his anger on people that he does not even know. If such an incident is only a concept rather than a reality it is easier to be content with doing nothing of significance to stop it from happening again. When we actually witness the horror with our own eyes our perspectives are nevermore the same.

I am a gentle soul. I try not to hurt anyone even with my words. Most of us are like that. We cannot fully imagine horrific scenes because it never occurs to us to be intent on reeking violence on anyone. Those of us who think of the injured and their families after a mass shooting sincerely grieve for a time and we even pray for peace and comfort. Nonetheless we are not insistent enough to bring about meaningful legislation and enforcement that will finally bring the changes that we so obviously need. We only feel more and more helpless as we watch the processes of violence and condolence being repeated again and again. Nothing ever changes. 

We will be gathering with friends and family this week to give thanks for our good fortune. The launch of another holiday season will begin. We won’t want to tarnish our happiness with negative thoughts, so little will be mentioned about the problem with gun violence that is all too prevalent in our nation. Few of us feel totally safe anymore and that is not because of any one person who is supposed to be in charge. It is because of our own reluctance to do the kinds of things that we know we must do. It is long past time to control the types of guns that are produced and sold in our country. Arguing that we somehow have a right to weapons that were never intended to be used by private citizens is a specious claim. Allowing them to stay in circulation because there are already too many of them in homes across America is not a good reason to continue to do nothing. We as a nation have to decide whether or not we want to continue living with the continued threat of mass shootings. 

It is time for a national therapy session in which we honestly consider what our obsession with guns has done. Most of us have been touched by mass shootings that were close to home. I live only miles away from a high school where a student took out his warped feelings on classmates and teachers. A former student of mine was forever changed when she attended a concert in Las Vegas where a shooter killed fifty eight people and wounded even more. She still has flashbacks of lying on the ground in a pool of blood while hearing the rat a tat tat tat of bullets. An horrific massacre took place in an elementary school in Uvalde, a place through which we have pulled our trailer on our way to a state park. Most recently my granddaughter was in lockdown for days after a gunman killed sixteen people in a bowling alley only nineteen miles from her college. It feels as though the inevitability of being a victim or knowing a victim is moving closer and closer while we keep turning our backs on the problem after a brief interlude of concern. 

I do not believe that the second amendment was meant to spawn arsenals in the homes of citizens. I cannot imagine that the men who wrote and ratified that addition to our Constitution ever imagined the kind of weapons and bullets that are so easy to purchase in today’s America. I suspect that they would be as horrified as I am that their words have been so distorted that even children are posed with weapons in their hands by parents who seem to think it is cute and patriotic to assert the right to arms with armed family photos. 

I find it vile and alarming to fetishize guns and conflate them with freedom. The message we are sending our children borders on abuse. They are crouching inside schools to practice for potential danger. They are talking with their teachers about what to do if a mass shooter comes to their school. We are spending valuable time and resources installing doors and gates and alarms because we don’t have the courage to actually stop the madness of flooding our homes and our streets with more and more guns. 

The greatest gift we might give ourselves and our children this holiday season is the acknowledgement that it is past time to come together to pass control measures that will work. Other countries have mentally ill people like we do, but they have also legislated mandatory buybacks of the most egregious guns. They stopped the madness while we kept turning our backs on what we know we must do. If we don’t speak out and push for change it will happen again and again. Our thoughts and prayers will sound hollow. Our silence will be lethal. If we love our children we will begin the process of change.