Millie LaFontaine lives in Concord.
I spent the last week getting a “grandchildren fix” in Colorado, something that has been all too rare (and particularly precious) since the pandemic. It was nonstop fun.
Together we went exploring on trails close to home and played hide-and-seek endlessly. I spent a lot of time chasing a toddler around zoos and museums at breakneck speed. Occasionally I was able to pause momentarily with her older sister and marvel at an animal or an amazing museum display.
Perhaps their favorite activity was making the rounds of the playgrounds within a few miles of home. Their favorite was in the park adjacent to Columbine High School. Remember Columbine? I don’t need to say any more to conjure up the litany: Columbine, Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Robb Elementary. The list goes on. Just while I was climbing ladders and sliding down sliding boards with my granddaughters adjacent to Columbine, six more victims were gunned down at the Covenant School in Nashville. To me, it seemed a huge cloud suddenly hovered over the fun. Fortunately, they are young enough not to see it — yet.
My granddaughters don’t know yet the emotional toll school shootings have taken on students all across the country. No matter how much their family wants to shield them from that, it is alarmingly clear that they will all too soon. The pace of gun-related massacres in schools and other public places is accelerating rather than showing any sign of slowing down. The first quarter of 2023 just ended, but at last count this year there have been 134 mass shootings, killing 196 and wounding 470.
These statistics are mind-numbing. This is not “freedom.” Freedom for whom? Certainly not for my grandkids and all the students who should be free to come to school and play on playgrounds joyfully.
This is not what we should expect from a “right.” When did killing innocent people become a “right,” or even a risk we as a society are willing to take? Are assault weapons in civilian hands what our founders had in mind as they wrote the Second Amendment into the Bill of Rights? Our politicians and our Supreme Court justices need to get off their high horses and take an honest look at what is actually happening on the ground. No right is so sacred that children, worshippers, shoppers, concert-goers, and other innocent people should serve as fodder for someone else’s “rights.”
Some assert that guns provide protection and improve safety. When was the last time when a civilian carrying a gun in a public space improved “safety?” If you can come up with one anecdote, I can give you a dozen more when the exact opposite was true.
Sadly, gun advocates would rather cling to their paltry anecdote or two than acknowledge the overwhelming statistical evidence of the actual facts. In contrast, the majority of us willingly wear seatbelts for safety because we acknowledge the facts. Those statistics show that more than half of the fatal motor vehicle accidents that occur each year in teens and young adults occur in those not wearing their seatbelts. Why is it so hard to acknowledge the safety statistics on gun violence?
Most people do not want the situation we are in. They want their children to go freely to school to learn and grow. They want playgrounds, movie theaters, and shopping centers to be places where children and adults can go for fun, recreation, or just plain living life. They want to gather in churches, synagogues, mosques, and other houses of worship to exercise their First Amendment rights, not to fear that another individual with a deranged interpretation of his Second Amendment rights can walk in and gun them down.
Politicians talk about “hardening” schools, arming teachers, locking down buildings, and locking up shooters, like those would actually work. Is the evidence on their side? Absolutely not. They bandy about talk of waiting periods, red flag laws, gun safety requirements, mandatory gun registration, elimination of bump stocks, and other possible safety measures which might be a tiny deterrent some of the time. Sadly, if they ever get as far as “sitting down at the table” with each other, they find themselves at an impasse, too afraid to make real changes. Are they so bent on reelection that they feel the need to mollify disproportionately powerful gun rights groups?
The elephant in the room is that we have far too many dangerous guns and far too many potential shooters. No tinkering around the edges of those facts will make school a better experience for American schoolchildren. Shooters intent on having their spree will find a way to get a gun to do it. The gun lobby needs to stand down. Politicians need to stand up and do their job. Please, politicians! For the sake of us, our children, and our grandchildren, do your job. Enough is enough!