I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the dying. Sick of the cynics that say no amount of gun regulation could prevent some kid from walking onto a school bus on a Tuesday morning in Miami and shooting a girl the age of my sister point blank, to death, while a seven year-old girl hears the dying whispers of her next-to-her sister, soaking in the madness and terror of a bus-full of screaming children, absorbing the silence that follows her inner ear's sirens as those of police cars approach to quell the now-unfolded violence that will forever be indelibly marked upon her mind and her memory. "Why, sis?"
I'm sick of those citizens who cling to their guns like a tree clings to the sun, who prize gleaming barrels so they might clean off a deer or a sparrow–for fun–and place this idea of freedom above the freedom of a young child to live without fear that someone might someday walk right up to them and, faster than he or she can escape, end his or her contract with this one-and-only-chance-to-live-and-dance-as-far-as-we-know-it. But nobody notices. No one will SCOTUS it. Only Affirmative Action and healthcare and voting is. But gun violence? Nobody's owning this.
We can't amend the 2nd amendment unless we have a far-reaching enough motive; yet look at how senseless and easy it is for a young teen to lose life to a knife...to a strike...to a fight...to a gun's sight. It's enough to make a nun cry.
Almost half of all suicides happen with bullets. How many you and I's go because it's faster to pull it? Does it matter that we have as many guns as we have people? That 100,000 Americans are shot ever year? Do we care that a million people have been killed with a gun since MLK was assassinated? Is this the way we want to live, just so that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"?
Can't we just be honest and look in the mirror and accept that this is a problem; that when we tell our children that we are the grown ups and that finding solutions is our onus we don't really mean it, not as long as we see that the guns we pretend that we need are just means to an end we pretend we don't see?
Can't we change so that teens like young Lourdes Guzman-DeJesus can continue to dream?
Can't we change what it means to be free?
Can we, please?