Our nation is grieving yet another mass shooting. This time the outrage is a bit different because so many children were killed. This is how it should be. There are two issues I want to address.
I have many friends and probably family members who will disagree with what I am going to write: it is time to do something drastic to keep "weapons of mass destruction" off the streets. For goodness sake, we went to WAR in a foreign land over this issue, costing thousands of lives of our best young men and women, but we do very little in our own country to protect the youngest, most vulnerable of our citizens.
Some of my friends will say, "But we have the right to protect ourselves." I would not argue with that. But NOBODY has yet brought their gun to school, to the theater, to the mall, and stood up to protect the innocent people who were gunned down. It just doesn't happen that way. Do you carry your gun when you take your children to school or pick them up? When you visit your child's school, do you stick your gun in your purse just in case?
Some of my friends will say, "We just need to keep the guns out of the hands of mentally ill people." A good sentiment, I'm sure, but impossible to carry out. When is mental illness always noticeable? When does a person snap? And available weapons bring quick and terrible destruction.
The second issue: When our homes and video arcades are filled with violent video games that children, teens, and adults play for hours on end, practicing shooting others, albeit cartoon-type figures, desensitizing themselves to blood and gore, violence, and loss of life...we WILL have a problem. The military train snipers with the very same video games.
We must become outraged at death once again, and do all we can to protect the lives of people in our care - as families and as a nation. It's time to fight for peace in our land.
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