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Do you know what scares me the most about the gun crisis in the U.S.?
It’s not the mentally ill male between the ages of 18-25 who takes out his prejudice on children at a school.
It’s not the NRA with all its power and influence.
It’s not Republican extremists in Congress. Although I find them all dangerous in their own ways, it’s not them.
No, it’s us.
It’s you and me. I’m personally terrified of all the passive, silent people. The folks who live quiet lives and go about our business raising our children, doting on our grandchildren, paying our bills, trying to keep up with inflation, paying our taxes and doing our best to be good citizens.
I’m afraid of us. I fear our silence and our apathy. I fear our sense of resignation that this is the way it is, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I fear our indifference the most.
It terrifies me because many of us want gun control. Some reports indicate that as many as 92% of the adult American public, including Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, want sensible gun laws that protect all of us.
We want AR-15s and AK-47s to be outlawed. These aren’t hunting rifles. They’re weapons of mass destruction. They’re instruments used by domestic terrorists.
It’s a radical, off-the-rails, rabid minority that has gone bonkers and is holding the rest of us hostage. And we’re letting them.
Silent and resigned
And you know what else scares me? If most of us stay silent and continue to feel resigned and powerless, how do you think the next six months will look? What about a year from now? Two years? Five years? If we don’t speak up in significant ways, if we don’t make significant changes, what’s going to happen to us? What’s going to cause this insanity to stop?
I could give you statistics, but you already know them. There are mass shootings somewhere in the U.S every week now. What’s it going to take to stop this madness? Do you think that thoughts, prayers, or tsk-tsking to friends and family is enough? Will continuing to stay silent and suffer this madness change anything?
President Biden recently signed a bill called the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. I don’t feel the law is sufficient. Although it is a start, it fails to ban any weapons including AK-47s and AR-15s. These weapons of mass destruction must be banned. What possible rationale can there be for allowing ownership of these weapons? They are meant for use by the military in battle. They absolutely don’t belong in a civilian environment.
We need to draw the line somewhere. Why not here? The majority of us want these weapons to be illegal. Why aren’t we insisting that our elected leaders abide by our wishes? As voters, we must hold them accountable to us, not to the NRA or to right-wing special interest groups.
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