I’ve been kind of a soft gun safety advocate, but that now has ended. The stunning cowardice and lack of respect for the will of the American People that was shown in the U.S. Senate this week has spurred me to take on gun safety as a one of my primary political issues. Like most the issues I advocate for it is going to be a long up-hill fight, but that can’t be a consideration when 30,000 of my fellow citizens die every year from guns and another 100,000 are injured. Enough is enough.
But being an activist means taking action and for all that writing here is emotionally satisfying it is not going to actually change things in the meat-space of the real world; that require actual action and I have a plan I intend to follow.
It is pretty simple. Every week day I am going to go to my local papers websites and do a search for gun violence. I will take all the links I find and then send them in an e-mail to my Representative in the House and my Senators.
The intent is to make sure that they understand the plague of gun violence in our nation. Any one day will not have much of an effect but as time goes by it will build up and make it clear to them what the vast majority of the people already know, our status quo is unacceptable and doing nothing about it is intolerable.
Now, it is true that the Rep and Senators are not very likely to see these e-mails, but their staff will and, hopefully, it will put the need for change into the minds of the people around the elected officials. That is the first step towards getting them to actively support the much needed and very modest changes that were denied an up or down vote in the Senate this week.
If you want a safer nation, a nation where all gun sales are checked to make sure that the buyer is not on the list of people legally denied the right to bear and own arms then I ask you to join me in taking ten minutes a day to stand up for what you want.
My Senators and Representative are on record as supporting these changes, but they are still going to hear about it from me every week day until things change. It is not because I think they might change their minds, but more to make sure that this issue does not fade just because the horror of Sandy Hook recedes in to the mists of time.
All this might not have a lot of impact, but this is going to be a fight for every inch of ground. If it moves the issue forward one inch then it will be worth it to me.
So, Kossacks, I am asking, what is change worth to you? Is it worth a few minutes a day to try to reduce the amount of carnage our misguided gun laws are causing? If so please join me in making sure that our elected officials understand how bad things are away from the hallowed halls of power.
The floor is yours.