Hey, wait a minute. Wasn’t that mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., supposed to be the Mother of All Wakeup Calls to end gun violence in America?
Weren’t we supposed to have been shaken to our core, energized in an unprecedented way to seek an end to this madness?
I thought so, too.
Silly me.
Check out the map here and ask yourself: Why has this violence continued?
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/10/5797306/map-school-shooting-sandy-hook
Seventy-four.
That’s the number of school shootings that have occurred since Sandy Hook, where 20 first-graders and six teachers were killed by that single madman, who then shot himself to death.
The latest incident occurred near my hometown of Portland, Ore., where a 15-year-old Reynolds High School student walked into a locker room and killed a 14-year-old freshman instantly with a single bullet. The shooter then took his own life.
We’re outraged yet again. President Obama said after the Portland tragedy that “we’re the only industrialized nation” where this kind of violence occurs with such regularity.
I don’t have the answer. Nor do I know where to find it.
The Second Amendment says we have the right to keep and bear arms. I don’t believe it says everyone in America — regardless of their mental condition — has the same rights to a firearm as most of the rest of us.
There must be a way to prevent them from putting their hands on deadly weapons — and putting our children at such horrifying risk.