No More

I feel an overwhelming sense of sadness and there is a knot in my stomach.  Not again.  Twenty little children shot to death in their classrooms along with teachers and their principal.  And this is the second shooting in a week—people were also killed in a shopping mall while doing their Christmas shopping.  My heart goes out to the community of Newtown, Connecticut; they are in my prayers.  I cannot imagine their pain.

This time, however, I have another overwhelming feeling.  It is anger.  All day I have watched as the news about this horrible tragedy unfolded.  I have read blogs and seen people’s comments on Facebook.  I saw that old worn-out statement “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”  One person even suggested that the same thing would have happened if the gunman had a knife or even a piece of glass instead.  Seriously?  The guy had semi-automatic handguns.  Others posted that there was just nothing we can do about these things—there are crazy people in this world.  However, the overwhelming number of comments I read expressed what I am feeling—sadness and even outrage.

It is past time for us to sit down and talk about this.  How dare anybody say that there is nothing we can do to protect our children!  Do these pro-gun citizens feel that their guns are more important than the lives of our children?  This is a moral issue.  How can we stand by and do nothing?  We must look at gun control.  I’m not advocating taking away everybody’s guns.  But what individual needs an automatic weapon?  That’s just crazy.  We need to keep weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill.  And we absolutely must take a good look at how we care for our mentally ill citizens.  Many of them are not getting the medical care they need and their relatives’ hands are tied.  Politics needs to be set aside while our leaders work together for solutions, with input from all of us.  We need to do this now.  No more of this!