Today we try to pay tribute to victims of gun violence in Newtown, and every town across the country. Please help amplify our message by recommending these diaries and sharing them through social media.
Over 100,000 people are shot and 30,000 die from gunshots every year in America; that’s about 80 people a day killed by a gun. We hear of car crashes on traffic reports and we see the backups, yet as we sit inconvenienced on the freeway we understand why we spend the money and effort to reduce injury and death. Willingly, we put up barriers, set speed limits, and require training and licensing. We require manufacturers to spend millions of dollars testing and designing safer vehicles. Then we hire people to enforce the rules we put upon ourselves.
What we don’t see as we are sitting stuck in the traffic jams, just over the sound walls, in the neighborhoods are families being torn apart by violence amplified by the power of a gun. Just like we don’t see all the traffic accidents on the local news, we don’t see all the gun violence on the news. There is just too much to report so only the most sensational gets reported, but every family affected by gun violence deserves our attention.
If December 14, 2012 was like any normal day in America, then about 30% of the day’s gun deaths were reported on the national news, an amount not normally reported. Only the most shocking are covered widely by the media, while completed suicides, Domestic Violence, and accidents go mostly unnoticed. We’ve seen the Columbines and Auroras, malls and schools targeted by the most troubled of the troubled. But what happened at Sandy Hook was a new extreme, it was violence amplified to an extreme, released on a classroom of first-graders.
Returning home from dropping my third-grader at school was when I heard the first reports on the news. As the news flowed from the TV, images flowed through my head and I could feel the despair in my stomach. The cruelty left me empty, not something that could be digested before it would be time to pickup my little one from school. Eventually the time to pick her up came, I couldn’t look her in the eye not wanting her to see I had been crying. She shouldn’t have to worry about such things, no kid should.
We went through the weekend without telling her, but realized Monday morning kids would be talking and knew she had to hear it from us first. Sunday night we told her as much as we felt she needed to know. We answered her questions and helped to dispel unreasonable fears. But not all her fears were unreasonable; the numerous new safety drills and rules at her school reinforced this. A sad loss of innocence was unfolding because of an epidemic of gun violence.
In the year since 12/14 I’ve delved into the gun violence issue, it’s been educational and frustrating. This is not just one problem; each category has different causes and possible solutions. Sadly, we have not been moving forward on this problem, with the help of groups like the NRA we have been moving backwards. It’s like car manufacturers lobbying to remove seatbelts and lawmakers simply complying. Like many problems of our times, commonsense is ignored, but we keep pushing and that is what I intend to do. I want a safer world for my daughter and for all children.
We Are All Newtown
Newtown Memorial Garden
“I have HOPE, hope that because of this new coalition of Americans, "change is gonna come". Newtown is no longer just a place, but a movement.”
“We are all Newtown and we are all Hartford. And Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Aurora, Tucson, Virginia Tech, and Columbine. We all stand united in our quest to end the parade of pain. We all seek peace. PEACE.”
“We are all Newtown. We choose love. LOVE! Honor with action.”
~Monte Frank
Americans from very different communities are locking arms and honoring the memories of the more than 30,000 victims of gun violence since 12/14 by performing acts of kindness. In this way, those lost to gun violence will be honored with action.
http://newtownaction.org
#HonorWithAction
#ActsOfKindness
#Newtown
We Are All Newtown Blogathon posts from 9AM Eastern to 8PM Eastern, Saturday, December 14, every couple hours throughout the day. Featuring Monte Frank who is in Washington DC for the National Vigil For Victims of Gun Violence.
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