Imagine, you drop off your six-year-old son at school in the morning, only to receive his tiny, lifeless, bullet riddled body instead of his jovial, bubbly self at pickup. You witness your ten-year-old daughter receiving an award of excellence in school, smiling with you for pictures, then celebrating the end of school with her class before pickup time. You never could’ve known that assembly would be the last time you’d hold your child. Envision your child during an active, mass shooting, covering themselves with their friend’s blood, hoping to look dead, hoping to survive. What about your own spouse, a beloved educator, putting their body between bullets, shielding students from the gunman.
The gunman in the Uvalde school shooting, like so many others, waged weapons of war on classrooms filled with young, innocent children. In addition to his AR-15, he had hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Most of his victims so horrifically disfigured, they could only be identified via DNA identification. Can you imagine this? If your child, or a child you love, was the victim of the gruesome massacre in Uvalde, how would you feel right now? Is this something you can even wrap your head around? What would you expect from society and leaders who have the power to stop these kinds of senseless, brutal slaughters?
By looking at the faces of these little angels, and their beloved teachers, how could you not want to be a part of prevention? Truly, if your heart doesn’t ache, if you don’t feel the pain of the parents, and loved ones, of these children, if your blood doesn’t boil and make you angry enough to demand real change (commonsense gun laws, banning weapons of war, high-capacity magazines, and bump stocks), then you suffer from heartlessness, your moral compass has run amuck. This is about heart, morals, empathy, and humanity. This is not about politics. This is about human life and the value we, as a country, put on it.
In the 10 years since Sandy Hook, there have been 948 school shootings, taking the lives of and wounding more than 35,000 youth (Gun Violence Archive). Through May of this year, there have been 233 mass shootings in the U.S., 27 of which have been in schools. Our schools have become battlefields. Those who survive, providing a sentence of lifelong complex trauma.
In the last three weeks, black people were targeted and killed while grocery shopping in Buffalo, NY. Asian Church goers were gunned down during Sunday Service in Southern California. Nineteen children and two teachers were slaughtered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, with seventeen more wounded. Four people were slain in a Tulsa Oklahoma hospital. The United States gun homicide rate is 26 times that of other high-income countries.
The population of the United States is 332.4 million. Some argue we need more guns to protect ourselves from the “bad guys,” but there are approximately 400 million guns, 20 million of which are semi-automatic rifles, in American homes. Do we really need more guns?
Fifty Senators have refused to vote for H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, which passed the House. Why are they not voting on it? This sort of legislation allows for proper protections, while also ensuring responsible gun ownership for hunting and safety is maintained.
90% of Americans, regardless of their
political views, want this to pass. Senators holding the American people hostage are doing so for their own power and position. For them, this is much more important than human life. Shame on them! They provide for and protect their families at the expense of America’s slaughtered children.
If Senator Mitch McConnel and all those Senators opposing legislation like H.R.8 could truly understand what it feels like to be shot, to experience a child or loved one’s brutal murder, they wouldn’t be the same human beings fighting for gun rights over life rights, playing politics over empathy and respect for all.
As a survivor of gun violence, I know exactly what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a trigger pull. Bullet fragments from the sawed off, double barrel shot gun used to shoot me shattered my face and skull. Twenty years later, more than three dozen fragments remain embedded, health complications continue. This, saying nothing of the complex trauma that remains. My attacker possessed dozens of guns, 100’s rounds of ammunition. Police found them stuffed under his couch and overflowing from the trunk of his car.
Even as a survivor of gun violence, I am not against responsible gun ownership. Like most Americans, I simply want common sense legislation – protections – to reduce senseless gun violence in our country. Let us all come together and demand action of our elected officials. Background checks will save lives. Banning weapons of war, high-capacity magazines, and bump stocks will save lives. Designating resources for mental health services will save lives.
For all the victims and survivors of Uvalde, Buffalo, Tulsa, Newtown, Las Vegas, and the countless other mass shootings, and for your own family, join me in prioritizing human life – because you don’t have to be a victim of gun violence to demand that human rights eclipse gun rights.
~ Rais Bhuiyan, Founder and President, World Without Hate