Children, or guns?

When we in Connecticut hear of a tragedy like the one in Uvalde, Texas, where an elementary school full of young children and teachers was decimated by an 18-year-old shooter with an AR-15-style rifle on May 24, our minds immediately go back to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in 2012. Then, the shooter killed 20 children and six adult administrators and teachers. As of this writing, it was determined that 19 children and two teachers were murdered in Uvalde.

For those who live through such devastation, the ways to process it are too few. Knowing there are prayers and thoughts with them is not enough to make their lives whole again. It is tragic in its own way that such mass shootings happen often enough that there was an active shooter recovery guide put out by the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency in 2017, found here, www.cisa.gov/publication/active-shooter-recovery-guide, available to help communities come through the aftermath of mass shootings.

While the government can organize disaster plans to deal with such events (though in Texas it seems the police couldn’t follow any plan), it doesn’t seem to be able to find a way to act in order to prevent them from happening. Sen. Chris Murphy made it clear on the floor of the U.S. Senate on May 24 that it is time for those serving in that body to take action so there is federal legislation in place to protect Americans nationwide from the ability of violent people to purchase deadly weapons, especially assault rifles. Murphy and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, as well as our U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, are in the forefront of advocacy for gun reform, including passing legislation to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines nationally, and instituting strong background checks, as has been done in Connecticut.

But of course the Second Amendment, the NRA and those who vote to keep all guns available to those who shouldn’t have them are obstacles to passing it. Voters who agree that such change has to happen to move our country along a better path must let their representatives know that.

Americans who value gun ownership more than the lives of children will be judged by history, whether such violence occurs on the streets in urban neighborhoods where most gun deaths of young people occur, or in classrooms in suburban and rural ones. If the United States cannot find a way to overcome its love for guns, it will continue to pay too high a price in the loss of innocent lives. Gun deaths have decreased in Connecticut since reform measures have been put in place. But if there is no national action, is state action not in some ways futile?

What will it take to have those representatives in Washington who receive contributions from the NRA be willing to work with those who support gun reform and mental health funding and come up with some solutions? Will every county, every congressional district, in every state have to endure a mass shooting in order for a national set of reforms to be passed in Congress? Is that when the pressure will be enough for the American love for guns to be overshadowed by a universal agreement on a commitment to making our schools, public places and even our homes, safe?

If so, it will be too late. It would be the worst of ironies if the guns we cherish so and continue to buy in such large numbers completely destroy the stability of our society. A much larger portion of the money spent on the U.S. Department of Defense, then, meant to protect us from invaders, might have been better spent on addressing every aspect of gun violence and the social unraveling inside our own borders.