Hello All,
Twenty children and six adults went to elementary school on Friday and died before lunch. It seems as if no place is sacred anymore and the fact doesn’t change that we could still be next. I am heartbroken. The parents of Newtown could have been any one of us. It is so important to remember that but simple remembrance isn’t enough.
I am full of emotion right now because how young do the victims have to be and how many children need to die before we stop the proliferation of guns in our nation? Back in the early 1930s, the first major federal gun control laws were enacted in the wake of Al Capone’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. In the 1960s, the back-to-back assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy pushed Congress to enact the Gun Control Act of 1968. The attempt on President Reagan’s life led to 1993’s Brady background check law. Since that time, there have been one shooting after another. We can't just do as we did after Columbine, after Virginia Tech, after Aurora. Without any significant gun control reforms nothing has changed.
There is more on the table than just ready access to powerful weapons-we must also address mental illness. No longer can we pass these issues off until the next tragedy. Now is the time to take a careful examination of gun laws and the treatment of those who are mentally ill. President Obama spoke a powerful word when he said that this has happened too many times. Each time the cost becomes so much more unbearable, inconceivable and beyond measure.
Columbine……Virginia Tech………Aurora………and now Newtown.
I encourage you to hug your children and tell them you love them every single day. Become involved in school and political matters and make your voice heard. We must make a change-NOW!
Peace & Blessings,
Robin
