Stop the Insanity !

In the Sunday New York Times last week, there was an article about the Texas state legislature passing a law to allow guns on state college campuses. On the same day in an interview on CNN, a member of the gun lobby suggested that if students at Umpqua Community College were permitted to have guns on campus, someone would have been able to stop Christopher Harper-Mercer. According to reports, there have been thirteen mass shootings in the United States since the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, and to my knowledge, no one had a gun to be able to stop the perpetrator.

There has been this disconnect between those who hold the Second Amendment sacred and those who want to protect our children. Schools (and colleges for that matter) are supposed to be safe places. They provide a nurturing environment. They offer free lunch to students who cannot afford it. They offer health care and psychological services to those who need them. Students often turn to schools when things are not so safe at home. It’s no wonder that an increasing number of parents want to home school their children. But even with that extra cautionary step, it did not stop Jared Loughner in Arizona (2011) from killing a child and severely injuring former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Nor did it stop James Eagan Holmes in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado in 2012.

A graphic posted on a national news program last week indicated that during the last ten years about 300 Americans were killed from acts of terrorism and over 300,00 were killed by gun violence. As long as we continue to do nothing and as long as we continue to cave in to the likes of the NRA, these tragedies unfortunately will continue. I encourage all readers to contact their state and federal legislators and help stop the insanity.