This week we had a mass shooting. Again. I thought to myself, “what can I say about this to my followers?” Then I thought, wait a minute, I wrote about this before on a blog I was doing with my conservative friend Lorie a few years back. Turns out the blog was written to the day (almost). How is that for irony? Here is the blog in its entirety, turns out my opinion hasn’t changed much because we keep having mass shootings and no one is doing anything about it.** Want to read more updated statistics? Click here. If you want to know 5 things you can do right now to resist, persist, and insist on a better America, click here.
October 4, 2015
Three days ago was my birthday. Part of my present was my husband buying me bullets so we could go to the shooting range, the other part was a real soapbox from 1907. I am a progressive feminist woman armed with a gun and a soapbox. Gird your loins.
Three days ago there was also another school shooting. Nine people were slaughtered by a lunatic with multiple weapons. This isn’t ok. It should never, ever be ok. Sometimes when it comes to policies we need to reassess laws that may or may not have become outdated. Today, I respectfully submit that we should reassess the Second Amendment in order to do what Australia did in 1996. I also have one more proposal but I will save that for the end of this blog post.
Here are some facts:
In America, there has been nearly one SCHOOL SHOOTING a day since the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in December, 2012 (http://graphics.latimes.com/school-shootings-since-newtown/).
The Australian legislation restricts and prohibits the sale and ownership of almost every kind of semi-automatic rifle and rapid-fire gun. It also institutes a buy back program where the state buys back your guns. (http://mic.com/articles/123049/19-years-after-passing-strict-gun-control-laws-here-s-what-happened-in-australia)
In America, there is a mass shooting – defined as four or more people shot in one incident – nearly every day (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/oct/02/mass-shootings-america-gun-violence).
I am not proposing a complete ban on all guns here. I am pretty sure I like having my gun. I like shooting it at the range. It makes me feel good.
This is the first time I ever shot a gun. October, 2010
BUT, I am asking our Congress and other elected officials to stop pandering to high powered, wealthy lobbyists and take DECISIVE and SWIFT action to address this issue immediately.
I am asking for a congressional hearing. I am asking for Congress to go on a fact finding mission as they collect information about what a policy like the one in Australia would really look like in America. I am asking Congress to look at the blood of innocents that remains stained on their hands because of their incredible lack of inaction on this issue.
And if I am going to get really, really greedy (here is my second proposal that I mentioned at the beginning of this post), I would like congress to regulate assault rifles and rapid-fire guns like they regulate my female body. As one genius tweeter suggested yesterday, “A mandatory 48-hour waiting period, parental permission, a video he has to watch about the effects of gun violence…Let’s close down all but one gun shop in every state and make him travel hundreds of miles, take time off work, and stay overnight in a strange town to get a gun. Make him walk through a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death, people who call him a murderer and beg him not to buy a gun.”
Let’s take the killing of innocents seriously.
As a nation we can and must do better and we MUST call upon our elected officials to take action. It will be ok. The entirety of our nation will not collapse upon itself if we enact policy that mimics that of the good people of Australia, they seem to be doing ok and ironically, they aren’t getting murdered in mass shootings anymore. Go figure.
**To all the victims of mass shootings and their families…I wish you bravery and strength as you move through your grief.
If you want to know 5 things you can do right now to resist, persist, and insist on a better America, click here.