“I think we could be at a tipping point, a tipping point where we might actually get something done.”
-Sen Charles Schumer after Newton
“So, there will be a bill. We’ve been working on it now for a year.”
-Sen Dianne Feinstein after Newton on gun control
“I applaud President Obama’s statement that we need to take meaningful action to prevent future suffering of the kind we experienced last week.”
-Rep John Yarmuth after Newton
“Now is the time for a national policy on guns that takes the loopholes out of the laws, the automatic weapons out of our neighborhoods and the tragedies like today out of our future.”
-Michael Bloomberg after Newton
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this senseless tragedy.”
-pretty much everyone after every mass shooting
“Thoughts and prayers are not enough.”
-President Obama 30 September 2015
San Bernardino experienced a mass shooting tonight. In a place where mentally and physically disabled people are helped, they experienced terror and death instead of healing. All of us will have to figure out how we’re supposed to put this into our heads, and right now there is a great deal of shock across the country. But the question is, why?
Why are we shocked? It’s happened over, and over, and over. I’ve had to teach my kid, my five year old kid, what to do if someone’s shooting up her school. Newton happened. A whole bunch of little kids died and we prayed. “When you pray, move your feet” is an African proverb. That’s not happening. We pray, and some people say not to talk about the politics of it until the victims’ families have had some time to heal. We’ve had more mass shootings this year than days, so when are we supposed to talk about how to fix it? There isn’t enough time for one group to heal before another SWAT team is being sent in somewhere else.
I’m not deluded enough to think that if you ban guns, this will stop. But, we can’t even talk about the mentally ill needing better services or if maybe limiting how many rounds someone can buy at once is a good idea. When did discourse about keeping citizens alive become this contentious? When did we decide that mourning and platitudes would be better than keeping people alive? When did we, as citizens, decide to give up and let the bad guys with guns win? Hell, we aren’t just letting them win; the good guys aren’t even showing up to the game. When did we decide that it’s safer to not talk about how to fix this, because god-forbid we offend anyone? People are dying, and the prayers are going up. And the feet don’t move.
Sarah's Essays 