Hi all, quick post today because I have been sick, and I am just trying to make it through the week.
I want to recommend today’s podcast episode of The New Abnormal, in which Danielle Moodie interviews one of the Tennessee Three,” state legislator Gloria Johnson, who speaks clearly about our failures to enact gun sense laws. We CAN do better and we must.
As a parent, child safety expert, and experienced classroom teacher myself, America’s failure to protect our citizens from gun violence is the biggest shame and failure of my adult lifetime. I was a high school teacher in 1999 when the Columbine tragedy happened. Pregnant at the time, I sure felt vulnerable, for myself and my students and colleagues. What has come to pass since then was unimaginable at the time.
Things were better when we had an assault-weapons ban. Since that legislation was allowed to expire in 2004, things have gone to a “New Abnormal” indeed. We are now at a point where we have utterly failed our kids: in the USA, Gun violence is the #1 killer of children. More than car accidents. Futile “safety tools” such as bulletproof backpacks are marketed to kids, who now routinely do active-shooter drills at school.
It does not have to be this way. The USA is a sick outlier when it comes to gun violence, compared to the rest of the world. We must reject this deadly form of “American Exceptionalism.”
We need to stand side-by-side with kids, families, teachers—everyone who refuses to accept this status quo. “Why are you protecting guns and not kids?” There is NO good answer to this question other than “We have to turn things around right now.”
Gloria Johnson gives a great interview on this topic. Additionally, she talks about gerrymandering in Tennessee in a way that has direct relevance to North Carolina, especially now that the NC Supreme Court has upheld gerrymandering. In Tennessee, Congressional maps are slicing up cities like Nashville into pie slices attached to rural areas, effectively diluting the Democratic vote, and depriving Nashville of coherent representation. A must-listen.
I was at a political gathering recently where someone asked me as a child safety expert if we can stop mass shootings through individual action alone—and my answer is NO. This requires collective activism and legislation. Be like the Parkland surviving students and bereft families like Fred Guttenberg: insist on change and never give up! Together, all of us who stand for gun safety are bigger and more powerful than the gun lobby.
Please join the efforts of Everytown for Gun Safety or other worthy organizations working for change. And make electing Gun Sense Candidates—Democrats—in the next election a top priority.