I’d like to start this piece by saying that these words will change nothing.
Everything written here is just part of a cycle: You will read it. You will agree or disagree. You may pat yourself on the back for staying informed. The best of you will say a prayer or whatever your equivalent of that is for the victims of Orlando.
Then you will forget.
We all forget.
And then, once Orlando is buried beneath a fresh news cycle, presidential campaign ads and gaffs most likely, someone somewhere will legally purchase a gun.
They will load it, enter a public space, and murder people.
People. Will. Die.
It might not be 50 people, it might not be toddlers, but human beings will die. It’s guaranteed at this point, because nobody cares.
I want to tell two stories here. The first is anecdotal. When I was a child, my room had a nail sticking out of the floor. I paid no mind to it: I was a stupid child. Then one day, when I ran into my room, I sliced my toe open on the nail. I cried out in pain, and my mother came running upstairs asking, “What’s wrong? What’s happened?” and I sobbed, “I cut my foot!” and she asked “How did you do that?” and I said “The nail!”
That afternoon my father hammered the nail deep into the floorboards where it could never hurt me again.
That was a nail. Now imagine if someone walked into my house with an assault rifle and murdered my siblings and me. Children. It shouldn’t be hard to do after Sandy Hook.
Wouldn’t you say it’s fair that we should remove the factor that caused the pain, even if only temporarily? Hammer the nail into the floorboards? My parents recognized that a simple solution to the problem at hand was to remove the immediate danger while they taught me to be a more observant individual. Doesn’t it make sense for us to eliminate the immediate danger of mass shootings while we as a country work on our ability to understand and not hate one another? Hatred takes a long time to expunge, while mass shootings happen in an instant.
And I'm not calling for the recall of all guns in the country. I'm talking about common sense gun control legislation, something most Americans agree that we need.
The United States isn’t foreign to this line of thought, either: After 9/11, when terrorists attacked us with airplanes and murdered thousands of people, the nation gathered and made changes: Locks were added to pilot’s cabin doors; the TSA scans people for weapons and explosives; we have to take off our shoes. Nobody said, “Planes don’t kill people! People kill people!”
Yeah, but now it’s harder for people to kill people with planes. That was sensible, right? Do we really want to be that country that chooses to honor a piece of writing from 240 years ago instead of being sensible?
And if you disagree, can’t we at least talk about it?
Most often the answer is no, and that brings me to my second story. The origin of this madness.
Let’s go back to May 21st and 22nd, 1977. Many of you have no idea what those dates are, but you should. That weekend was the beginning of this gun control debate as we know it. It was the revolt at Cincinnati, the weekend the NRA lost its mind (Washington Post).
The NRA was originally a very levelheaded organization: founded in 1871, its goal was to improve its members' shooting ability. However, after a string of gun control laws in the 1960s and 1970s, a few members were unsettled by the idea of the government “infringing” on the Second Amendment. One such member was Clifford Neal Knox. Knox was a gun enthusiast, and hated the legislation of 60s and 70s, and began spreading rumors that assassinations and other violent acts at the time were part of a plot by gun control advocates to take away the people’s firearms (Washington Post).
You know, a conspiracy theorist.
But Knox gained traction, and at that fateful convention in 1977, he and his group of strict interpreters of the Second Amendment took control of the meeting and overthrew the old guard leaders (Washington Post).
The rest of the story we know. Power changed hands a few times but the NRA more or less continued on its strict anti-gun control policy, and with its massive membership it has become one of the most influential lobbying groups in America. Their conspiracy theories are now taken as fact and prevent us from moving forward as a country.
But most recently, they enabled one man to murder 50 people.
The irony of this story is that these gun rights activists fear Big Brother, when in fact they’re already working for him, an organization that gains power through lies and propaganda.
My point of recounting the NRA's history is to show that the nation hasn't always felt this way when it comes to guns. If even the NRA used to believe in common sense gun legislation, the rest of the country can too.
So please, do your own research, be your own person. I understand the need to feel protected – my family has been burglarized in our own backyard – but don’t let your paranoia allow innocent people to die.
Don’t let Orlando be just another statistic.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims in Orlando and their families, and to all victims of all mass shootings. We can do better. We have before.
