We are Failing our Children

What does horror feel like in your body?

Nausea? A hollowing out of your chest? Bile rising in your throat? A rapid chill in your limbs or a spread of heat through your face? I felt all these this week as I tried to imagine the horror those children and teachers felt in Texas as they realized they were being slaughtered inside their classroom with no escape.

The news from an elementary school in Texas this week, a supermarket in New York last week, a church in California shortly before that—it has made me physically sick with horror, anger, and grief. The common denominator in each of the 220 mass shootings in the U.S. THIS YEAR ALONE (by day 144 in the year) is unfettered access to guns and ammunition. Nothing has changed since Sandy Hook, that moment of horror in 2012.

I am enraged at politicians and others who make these moments of senseless horror about mental illness and not guns. (And if you are the parent of an autistic child, you know that in most cases, the shooters will almost all be called autistic at some point). The vast majority of people with mental illness never resort to mass violence. Is mental illness sometimes involved? No doubt. But even if we leave guns out of the equation (which we cannot), those same people who oppose gun control are also not providing adequate resources for mental health care in this country. The actions do not match any part of the rhetoric, and meanwhile, babies are dying in school rooms without their parents there to protect them and comfort them.

These children were maimed beyond recognition. They had to be identified via DNA testing. Their families and everyone at that school are trauma victims. The ripples are huge.

It is easier to buy an assault rifle in this country than it is to adopt a kitten. It is easier to buy an assault rifle than it is for a hairdresser to buy bleach in this country. It is easier to buy an assault weapon than it is to get a driver’s license, rent an apartment, or start a job or college.

We don’t need either better mental care or better gun control. Not one or the other. We need both. 948 school shootings have taken place since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012. Since the historic attack at Columbine High School in 1999, nearly 300,000 students have been on campus during a school shooting.

Our children deserve better than this. Our elders deserve better than this. We all deserve better than this.

Feel the horror in your body. Imagine that classroom full of blood. Those sweet babies. Then take action. Some ideas are below for what we can all do.

Demand the following from your representatives:

1. Mandatory minimum waiting periods.
2. Universal background checks.
3. Complete ban on assault rifles.
4. Fix NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System). It does not need to be instant. E-checks are insufficient. The Charleston massacre shooter got through this system. It is badly flawed.
5. Fix health insurance and give everyone access to quality mental health care.
6. Make it illegal for politicians to be funded by the gun lobby.
7. Institute the same kind of regulations for owning guns as for cars: title and tag at each point of sale, training, written test, practical test, health requirements, liability insurance on each gun).
8. Make it as hard to buy a gun as it is to get an abortion.

We must do better. Do not shut yourself off from this horror. Use that bile to make change happen. We are not disempowered from making change unless we believe we are.