It is time. It is well past time. I am tired of being afraid to speak up about this for fear of the fallout. I am tired of kowtowing and trying to respect the other side of this, when they truth is, the other side isn’t trying to respect us concerned moms with kids in fear of their everyday normal lives.
The answer is not homeschool. The answer is not stay in your home. The answer is not to never go to a mall or a movie theatre or to take public transportation or even go to church for gods sake. Hugs and prayer are not the answer. FEAR IS NOT THE ANSWER.
I choose to GET LOUD. I am fucking tired of the scare tactics and the defense mechanisms of gun enthusiasts/owners thinking that we are violating their rights. With all due respect, when it comes to our kids being safe, you bet your ass I’m coming for your guns*.
I don’t really give a shit if this makes it more difficult for you to go hunting or to shoot targets. I DO NOT CARE. And ultimately, YOU SHOULDN’T CARE EITHER. If you have a few more steps to go through as a gun owner in order to keep everyone safe, why wouldn’t you do it? And Lawmakers, WHAT MORE ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
My kids took the bus about a mile to the library this morning. MY KIDS TOOK THE BUS ABOUT A MILE TO THE LIBRARY THIS MORNING. That sentence in and of itself shouldn’t terrify me but on some deep level living in the climate we live in right now, it absolutely does. A bus? A library?
Now I’ve been taking public transportation everywhere for decades without any real fear for my own life but now that I have kids, I OF COURSE worry about them. OF COURSE my priorities and fears shifted once I had kids. Didn’t yours? Wouldn’t you absolutely take a bullet for your kids?
What about when I’m not there? What about when they are in school? DO NOT TELL ME TO HOMESCHOOL. Do not. It may be the answer for you but it is not for my family and so many others and it absolutely shouldn’t have to be.
THIS PISSES ME OFF. It breaks my heart. Why do our kids have to be prepared for gun attacks? Why? It was never ever an issue for me growing up and that wasn’t all that long ago. WHY THE FUCK are there gunmen safety plans and drills in place and teachers and administrators suddenly forced into these positions of fighting for the lives of their kids? WHY? BECAUSE OF GUNS. GUNS GUNS GUNS.
Now I know. I KNOW that mental health is a core issue at play here, I KNOW THAT and I know major reform needs to happen in recognizing and treating mentally ill people in this country, nobody knows that more than me, but the guns. IT IS THE GUNS.
The beginning immediate right now emergency answer is handing out fewer guns and only doing so with much more regulation and many more penalties if not used appropriately. This is not the fucking wild west. We don’t need “good guys” wielding more guns in order to stop the “bad guys” because how often does that really work anyway. That argument is tired. This isn’t an action movie and you aren’t the star.
Stephen King says it much better than I ever could here in this piece .
I have nothing against gun owners, sport shooters, or hunters, but semi-automatic weapons have only two purposes. One is so that owners can take them to the shooting range once in awhile, yell yeehaw and get all horny at the rapid fire and the burning vapour spurting from the end of the barrel. Their other use – their only other use – is to kill people.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, gun advocates have to ask themselves if their zeal to protect even the outer limits of gun ownership has anything to do with preserving the Second Amendment as a whole, or if it’s just a stubborn desire to hold on to what they have, and to hell with the collateral damage.
In the end, this sort of ban can be accomplished in only one way, and that’s if gun advocates get behind it. I can hear people laughing and saying pigs will whistle and horses will fly before that happens, but hey, I’m an optimist.
If enough American gun owners urge Congress to do the right thing, and insist the NRA climbs aboard, the results might surprise you.
– Stephen King
Fear shouldn’t make you cling to your guns more, fear should make us embrace the changes that make us all safer. What have we got to lose?
We’ve seen all the memes. We’ve seen all the statistics. We’ve seen all the dead children. What the fuck is it going to take?
I am not okay. We as a country are not okay. And it’s not getting any better, it is getting worse. More extreme. This supposed fighting fire with fire IS NOT WORKING.
I am a mom. A mom who worries about her kids every single day. When I’m with them and more so when I’m not with them, but that doesn’t mean we retreat and hide. We stand up and we shout WE NEED CHANGE AND WE NEED IT NOW. If enough of us are shouting long enough and hard enough and not settling for no, it’s going to change. It’s got to change. These kids are counting on us. How can we in good conscience say, well we didn’t like the way things were going, but we just accepted it as the way of the country now and lived in fear. NO. NO NO NO NO.
I AM PISSED OFF. Are you? Let’s keep shouting and carrying the message no matter the fallout. Prayer is not helping keep these kids alive. We need change and change comes from action.
We fight to have these kids. We fight to keep these kids. We fight for our kids in our schools and doctor’s offices and on the playground and even in our own homes, how the hell can we not fight for them about this. For all of us. We are ALL RESPONSIBLE. This can happen anytime, anywhere as we continue to see it get worse and worse.
I am a mom. I support this group and their efforts – Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. I am a woman who is pissed off that the people I love are in danger everyday and we could help stop that by impinging on a few privileges of gun enthusiasts. That it would make their lives a little more difficult. That pisses me off. You know life is a lot more difficult when you lose someone you love to a gun.
I am a mom just like you. I pick and choose my battles and this one is about the most important battle I could ever choose to fight. For our kids.
*edited to say – this is a metaphor, I am not coming for your guns and I am not asking for your guns and I am not saying outlaw guns.
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Too Sober For This 