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ceebeegeeI just...I can't. This is just so goddamn horrible. Someone posted a collage of the students and teachers on Facebook last night and I couldn't, just couldn't stop crying. This is so awful and I'm not even involved. I can't even imagine the hell the families are experiencing. Kid-sized coffins? 20 of them? How do you even function? Their agony is mirrored and magnified every time they turn around--it's on TV, the newspapers and in their homes and streeets and churches.
I was talking to my Mom on the phone last night and I told her--as of now, gun control has officially become my third activist, deal-breaker issue. The first and second are women's rights (especially abortion) and gay rights. I vote along those records; I talk those issues up. And now it's gun control.* I will be giving money to the Brady campaign and the Colaition to Stop Gun Violence, and I'll be writing every elected official who represents me--including the President--to tell them if they don't start standing up to the NRA, they will lose my vote. As far as I'm concerned the NRA has blood on its hands. (I will never, ever forget Charleton Heston ranting about his right to own a gun 10 days after and just a few miles away from the Columbine massacre. Just unbelievable.)
*And I say this as someone who actually likes shooting guns. I enjoy it, and I'm good at it (I earned a ton of patches and ranks when I was a camp counselor, including marksman and sharpshooter. I don't wear them because I hate the NRA, and they're the ones who issued the patches). But if every firearm, including handguns, were made illegal and removed from the US somehow, that wouldn't affect my lifestyle in the slightest. When I was attacked, it wasn't a gun that saved me--it was because I did something the attacker didn't expect, I fought back and yelled. I didn't even have any pepper spray, much less a weapon. If people should be carrying anything to protect themselves, it should be pepper spray/mace, not a gun. Anyway I'm saying I absolutely would not care at ALL if the 2nd Amendment were repealed and every gun vanished from the land tomorrow. Realistically that is not likely to happen so I'll focus on assault rifles and semi-automatics. There is no other purpose for those except to kill people as efficiently as possible.
I was talking to my Mom on the phone last night and I told her--as of now, gun control has officially become my third activist, deal-breaker issue. The first and second are women's rights (especially abortion) and gay rights. I vote along those records; I talk those issues up. And now it's gun control.* I will be giving money to the Brady campaign and the Colaition to Stop Gun Violence, and I'll be writing every elected official who represents me--including the President--to tell them if they don't start standing up to the NRA, they will lose my vote. As far as I'm concerned the NRA has blood on its hands. (I will never, ever forget Charleton Heston ranting about his right to own a gun 10 days after and just a few miles away from the Columbine massacre. Just unbelievable.)
*And I say this as someone who actually likes shooting guns. I enjoy it, and I'm good at it (I earned a ton of patches and ranks when I was a camp counselor, including marksman and sharpshooter. I don't wear them because I hate the NRA, and they're the ones who issued the patches). But if every firearm, including handguns, were made illegal and removed from the US somehow, that wouldn't affect my lifestyle in the slightest. When I was attacked, it wasn't a gun that saved me--it was because I did something the attacker didn't expect, I fought back and yelled. I didn't even have any pepper spray, much less a weapon. If people should be carrying anything to protect themselves, it should be pepper spray/mace, not a gun. Anyway I'm saying I absolutely would not care at ALL if the 2nd Amendment were repealed and every gun vanished from the land tomorrow. Realistically that is not likely to happen so I'll focus on assault rifles and semi-automatics. There is no other purpose for those except to kill people as efficiently as possible.
