by Marian Wright Edelman
If I don’t make it I love you and I appreciate everything you did for me
–Text message sent from a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida to her mother
December 2017 marked five years since the unspeakable massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where a 20-year-old armed with a weapon he never should have had brutally killed 20 young children and 6 educators. As the nation mourned, I argued that this tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, was not an isolated incident but rather the consequence of our collective, indefensible failure to safeguard children over firearms and to challenge the pervasive culture of violence and the reckless spread of millions of guns that have no place in civilian hands. At that moment, I genuinely believed these shocking murders would compel our elected officials to finally prioritize children's lives and safety over political allegiances and the NRA, taking the necessary measures to shield children rather than weapons.
How mistaken I was.
Sandy Hook did shift public opinion on guns and ignited a fresh wave of advocacy to curb gun violence, yet it failed to fundamentally alter the cowardice of most of our elected representatives, who place their political self-interest above the well-being of our youth. While some states made meaningful progress in preventing dangerous weapons from reaching the wrong individuals, others regressed. Our Congressional leaders continue to offer empty condolences after horrific mass shootings while doing nothing to act—expanding and improving background checks, limiting access to assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, disarming domestic abusers, or even taking basic steps to keep firearms away from children through safe storage requirements. Congress has looked away and remained paralyzed as the deadly epidemic of gun violence has worsened. Since Sandy Hook, the rate of firearm deaths among children and teens has risen each year, with nearly 11,000 additional young lives lost.
On Wednesday, it struck again.
This time, the victims were teachers and students going about their day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida—perhaps excited about Valentine's Day because of a secret crush, or planning to attend Ash Wednesday mass that evening. The shooter, a 19-year-old former student with a history of troubling behavior and an obsession with guns, was armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, like many other mass shooters in the United States. In a brief period, seventeen people lost their lives and at least fourteen were injured. Once more, we witnessed scenes many of us first saw outside Columbine High School in April 1999, now tragically familiar in America: frightened students fleeing with hands raised, frantic parents desperate to reunite with their children, and traumatized survivors recounting the horrors they witnessed to television interviewers. And this cycle repeats and will continue until we unite and say enough.
An entire generation is coming of age understanding that nowhere in America is safe, having witnessed horrifying massacres killing 26 and 9 people in churches in Texas and South Carolina, 58 at a concert in Nevada, 49 at a nightclub in Florida, 9 at a college in Oregon, 14 at a workplace in California, 2 at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky in January, and now 17 more children and adults on an ordinary day at a high school in Florida. Tens of thousands of other shootings have shown us that gun violence does not discriminate. Twice since Sandy Hook, we have had to place a new tragedy at the top of the list of the worst mass shootings in American history, while gun death numbers grow in communities that often go unnoticed. When will this indefensible tolerance of violence end? When will children and human life matter more than a gunman's right to kill innocent people?
We have already waited too long for our leaders to protect children rather than guns.
Victims, survivors, and families affected by gun violence are too often forgotten. We must not let that happen again. How evil it was that on the very same day last December a national vigil was held just blocks from the Capitol to remember gun violence victims, the House of Representatives voted 231 to 198 to pass the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (H.R.38), an NRA priority that would allow individuals to carry concealed weapons across state lines even if the destination state has much stronger gun safety laws. For example, if the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act were to pass the Senate now, a person from Mississippi, Missouri, or Wyoming—who is not even required to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon—could travel with it to Massachusetts, California, or New York, which all require applicants to demonstrate good cause or justifiable need for a concealed carry permit. Forcing all states to recognize the concealed carry requirements of all other states, regardless of their own laws and protections, poses a significant threat to public safety nationwide. The concealed carry bill must not be taken up in the Senate.
Several other bills have recently been introduced in Congress and offer potential progress. I hope we will take any positive steps we can to move them forward. For example, the Lori Jackson Domestic Violence Survivor Protection Act (S.2044/ H.R.4186) would close loopholes in federal law that currently allow the sale and possession of weapons to dating partners or former dating partners convicted of domestic violence crimes, and prohibits the sale or possession of a firearm by a person subject to a temporary domestic violence restraining order. Research shows women in domestic violence situations are five times more likely to be killed if their abuser owns a gun, and their children are also at risk. An analysis by Everytown for Gun Safety found that a majority of mass shootings from 2009 to 2016 were related to domestic or family violence. Only 13 states require law enforcement to remove firearms at the scene of a domestic violence incident.
A domestic violence conviction should have barred the individual who killed 26 people in a Sutherland Springs, Texas church in November from purchasing a gun. The Air Force failed to report his conviction to the national background check system, enabling him to clear a federal background check to purchase the rifle used in this horrific crime. The bipartisan Fix NICS Act of 2017 (S.2135) would help ensure data are promptly and accurately reported. It requires federal agencies and states to create plans to comply with existing federal laws requiring reporting of mental health and criminal records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), provides financial support to states that comply, and penalizes agencies that fail to report these records.
Both these bills are common-sense approaches to help limit gun violence. While they do not close all dangerous federal loopholes that allow potentially dangerous people to obtain deadly weapons, their passage would be a critically important first step. There are also pending bills that would allow more research on gun violence, prohibit the sale of guns before completion of background checks, close loopholes in the background check system, and ban devices like bump stocks that allow shooters to increase the rate of fire of their semiautomatic weapons. All these positive steps deserve a vote. And it is also past time to reinstate the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that consistently increase the body count in our all-too-frequent mass shootings. We must keep using our votes and voices to move forward and never, ever give up until we succeed.
Every person who cares about protecting children and human life must stand up right now with urgency and persistence, join hands with those directly affected by gun violence, and demand Congressional action to prevent and break up the uniquely evil American love affair with guns and stop the scourge of gun violence that has killed more than 140,000 people and devastated thousands of families between Sandy Hook and this week's tragedy. A child or teen dies from gunfire every 2 hours and 48 minutes in the United States; 3,128 children and teens died from guns in 2016, enough to fill 156 classrooms of 20 children. It is a profoundly immoral travesty that the NRA and its craven Congressional allies continue pushing to weaken gun laws although the majority of Americans cry out for stronger safeguards and children witness and suffer from mass shooting after mass shooting.
In memory of the 17 children and adults whose lives were snuffed out this week at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the 2 children killed at Marshall County High School in Kentucky less than a month before, the 26 who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the tens of thousands more children and adults killed in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Charleston, Seattle, Orlando, Las Vegas, New York City, New Orleans, Sutherland Springs, and cities and small towns across our country, now is the time to call and visit your elected leaders urging them to protect children, not guns.
momsrising.org
