This was no drill or joke. Those kids were counting the number of tables between them and the door. My friend couldn’t reach the police by phone.
The NRA is an anti-American organization. Not its members, but the organization and what it purports to believe. This came into sharp focus for me on Friday when three local schools were locked down.
A friend shared her text messages with her 15 year old son. How she remained calm when texting him was one of the mysteries of motherhood that even dads don’t always understand. But I wept in my living room when I thought about this lovely family I know from church and how they wrestled with the unimaginable fear that someone with a gun was in the school.
This was no drill or joke. Those kids were counting the number of tables between them and the door. And my friend was trying to reach the police by phone, and it wasn’t getting answered.
So, deep breath here for me, folks.
I’m going to give you some data, and then I’m going to ask you to take an action after I do that.
In Florida, the gun legislation that passed this week still didn’t go far enough to meet public sentiment. It was approved by 67 legislators who have an A or A+ rating from the NRA. The people who pushed this bill through are Republicans.
Governor Rick Scott is a Republican with an A+ rating from the NRA. He wasted no time in signing the bill. That’s what the people’s representatives wanted in Florida.
The NRA filed a lawsuit against Florida within HOURS. They are fighting one of the law’s provisions. Wanna know which one?
They are fighting against the provision that raises the legal age to buy a gun from 18 to 21.
The NRA was taken over in the 1970s by lobbyist hacks. It’s a fascinating story that we don’t have time for right now, but this is not your grandfather’s NRA.
This is a group that uses fear against its members and makes large political contributions to get their way. The Parkland students finally broke through the noise and showed everyone that the emperor has no clothes and that the NRA’s old stranglehold on politicians needs to end.
Remember those babies at Sandy Hook who were murdered more than five years ago? A 20 year old white man (school shooters are pretty much all young white men) killed his mother. That’s pretty serious.
Then he went to the school and fired 154 bullets that tore apart 20 children between the ages of five and six. There were also 6 adults killed. Then the murderer shot himself.
The NRA’s response blamed rap music, video games, and movies for the massacre. Of course they know that these are all readily available in every country that don’t suffer multiple mass gun massacres every year.
They needed a scapegoat because they announced a plan to put an armed guard in every school that would be trained by the NRA. And just like that, the NRA would continue their egregious abuse of the American political system by entrenching itself in state school systems.
Listen, the people who are NRA members are just like any of us for the most part. Maybe they hunt. Maybe they are sports shooters. Whatever they’re doing is something that’s gone on for years. No reasonable person is suggesting that guns are rounded up from every American and the majority of dues-paying NRA members don’t buy into this crazy vigilante stuff.
But almost everyone–including NRA members–supports smart gun laws and closing loopholes. Obama didn’t come from your guns. Donald Trump did. And Florida Governor Rick Scott saw the loss of life in his state and agreed with the Florida legislature that people under the age of 21 shouldn’t be able to buy guns.
Did you know that 68 of the 84 school shootings in K-12 schools over 3 years were done by people under the age of 21?
That’s compelling data.
There are many such areas that need to be addressed in our society. And the second amendment of the Constitution isn’t inviolate. It can be changed. That’s what the word amendment means!
Here is what I want you to do if you’re tired of mass shootings.
If you are not registered to vote, I want you to register right now. You can do it online in two minutes here: https://www.vote.org/register-to-vote
If you are already registered to vote, please join one or several of the leading gun violence prevention groups. Put your name on their lists and get their emails. They will help you stay informed about ways you can help take the country back from gun manufacturer lobbyists.
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
I’m glad my friends and their families are safe. I am tired of this fight, and you must be too. The hostage situation in California yesterday is already out of the news.
We cannot allow ourselves to sit back again and wait for the next shooting so that we can take to Facebook, to emails, to bars and gyms, and mutter about thoughts and prayers.
We need to be acting now. Learning what a gun violence prevention group does won’t mean that you have to turn in your guns. It means that you’re able to handle the dissonance caused by holding two conflicting beliefs in your mind at the same time.
And yes, you can do it. But go register right now and join those groups after that.