LEARN MORE ABOUT THE WILLS FAMILY THROUGH MARALYS' MEMOIRS: A CIRCUS WITHOUT ELEPHANTS AND A CLOWN IN THE TRUNK

Friday, February 23, 2018

WE VALUE OUR GUNS MORE THAN OUR CHILDREN




These aren’t my words: they come from a letter to the Los Angeles Times. But how perfectly they sum up my attitude.         

Even now, after the Florida school massacre, the gun problem isn’t getting fixed. In spite of current outrage from students, parents, teachers, and the public, few have doubled-down on the one-and-only viable solution to mass killings: make automatic and semi-automatic weapons—like the AR-15—illegal.   

Nothing else can work. It will take time to get weapons-of-war out of gun shops—even longer to retrieve them from ordinary citizens.  But once banned, AR-15s will be used less often. Gun owners can rejoice over less-spectacular killings—down to one-by-one. 

Meanwhile, we’ve heard inane solutions from our president: turn our schools into armed camps; raise the age for buyers of war weapons; “fix” the mentally-ill (he doesn’t say how.)  While listening to families of murdered children, Trump’s remedies come out as though from the lips of NRA’s Wayne LaPierre . . . whose recent speech was infuriating.

Two Times letters are worth re-reading. From Terry Otsuki: “Our thoughts and prayers go out to members of Congress who have sold their souls to the NRA. May they find their humanity again and start taking action to prevent these mass murders.”   

And finally, Kim Eifert Krogstad says: “Other countries have mentally ill people capable of harming others. Other countries have young people who have been bullied or attacked by fellow students and are filled with rage. Other countries have despondent people who have given-up on life and want to go out in a blaze of glory. (Para.) But other countries do not have the kind of school shootings that we have here in the United States. The difference is that in the United States, we value our guns more than our children.”