Sadness and Screams from my Soap box

3.31.2023

As I stand on my soap box, the view is tragically bleak. Innocent little people holding hands as they exit their school,  surrounded by swat teams. Or the hysterical parents panicking to find out if their child is alive. Let those words sink in…parents desperately trying to know if the child they drove to school just a few hours earlier is alive. Cut to the local reporters grasping to share any details with viewers as the mob of national news vans descend on an otherwise quiet community. AGAIN. And AGAIN. Why? Because we are at the mercy of politics. Unfortunately major change can only occur federally if our elected officials pass legislation requiring stricter restrictions. Let me be clear, this is NOT a political post. This is a plea to humanity. 

Following the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida five years ago, the national dialogue about reasonable gun reform reached an all-time high. Victim’s parents were vocal and outraged and used their paralyzing grief to underscore the necessity for change in gun laws. The survivors became activists and used their platform to illuminate the trauma of surviving such a harrowing experience. No one escapes unchanged. Marches were held around the country to raise awareness and unify the cry to legislators. I personally attended the rally in Washington DC and believed we had reached a tipping point towards reasonable gun reform. The NRA lobby was exposed and companies who donated to them were pressured to cease the support or lose customers in droves. As a public relations professional, I recognized the movement was gaining traction, messages for change were penetrating the noise and there was hope. We were almost a decade removed from the tragic school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that killed 26 children and adults. Twenty of those victims were six and seven year old children. And, we were two decades removed from the Columbine High School massacre that resulted in the murder of 12 students and one teacher. At the time of those tragedies legislators were sending nothing more than “thoughts and prayers.” The Parkland community demanded a more substantive response than just rhetoric, and society was listening. But the deadly shooting of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas last year reminded us that we hadn’t made meaningful progress. Gun reform legislation was passed this year with bi-partisan support, but both sides argued they conceded too much. So the bill was progress, but weak progress. And the tragedy in Nashville this week is proof of that hypothesis. More innocent children slaughtered, more education professionals gunned down doing their job. When will the loss of these lives matter to the people who have the ability to enact legislation to further protect them?

Society was evolving on this issue. It feels that in my lifetime there has been a fundamental shift in the dialogue. The NRA was very effective for decades penetrating the simple message that any gun reform would result in the abolishment of the second amendment. Period. Their strategy was widely known—don’t give an inch and create intense fear for all members that all of their guns would be taken away if any reform was even discussed. This worked for a very long time. It was only after the public pressure on the NRA’s corporate donors and the political pressure on the candidates they supported became a public relations crisis. This drama was coupled with a power struggle inside the NRA leadership that led to cracks in the well-oiled organization. At the same time, activists began to realize that screaming for radical gun control was too broad and too alienating. Meantime, neither side was talking to the most important audience to help impact change: responsible gun owners. This is the group of people who responsibly and legally own guns for sport and/or protection. And that is ABSOLUTELY allowed under our second amendment and should be protected. An important moment on the timeline of societal attitudes finding common ground came after the terror in Uvalde. Physicians and emergency room workers with no political agenda took to the airwaves to describe in painstaking detail the harsh truth of what happens to a human being when shot with a semi-automatic machine gun style weapon. These weapons are for war. Their only purpose is to kill and kill quickly and efficiently. That is important for a battlefield, and incredibly tragic in a school. I remember the doctor speaking through tears as he shared that the only way to identify some of the children was by the sneakers they had worn that day. Their bodies had been blown to pieces. These are children. He suggested using crash car dummies to show legislators what happens when someone is shot with a military assault gun. The shots are fast, constant and not survivable. My friends who hunt for sport do not use semi-automatic machine weapons to blow apart deer. The people I know who own guns for protection do not use these weapons either. Banning the manufacture and sale of semi-automatic machine guns directly corresponds to a decrease in these types of massacres. We have the data to prove it because we tried it once and it was effective. It’s time to revisit that law.  IMMEDIATELY. For any legislator, regardless of party affiliation, to argue otherwise feels like a failure to represent the public. Polls show responsible gun owners largely support this type of reasonable gun reform. 

And yes, mental health is a big part of the issue and needs to be addressed as well, but we can attack this issue on multiple fronts. No doubt our identification and support of mental health issues is severely broken and contributes to many of our gun-related tragedies. But as many pundits explain, our rates of mental illness are no higher than other countries who do not face the gun crises that we do. So, logically it is a piece of the solution, and can’t be viewed as the issue solely responsible for our innocent children being viciously attacked with military-style weapons.

This week I saw a domestic counter terrorist expert discussing the importance of a three prong approach to addressing this crisis. The first two points are mentioned above. The third and final point was the value of crisis plans and preparedness and the presence of armed school officers where appropriate. She was emphatic that this is an important component in reducing the number of victims in a given attack, but it can’t prevent an attack. She explained that if the assailant is using a military weapon in the attack, they can cause such devastating damage so quickly, unfortunately plans and armed guards can only help mitigate the duration of an attack. But, that is very important and not to be dismissed. Saving the life of one child matters. Making schools feel safer matters. It just can’t be the only solution. 

So, what is preventing us from seeing meaningful change in these three areas? Simply put, I feel our legislators are out of step with the desires of society today. This was not the case decades ago, but the dialogue began to shift after Parkland and it seems the people in this country have progressed further than those who hold the power to create real change. That is not unusual. But we don’t have to just accept it. Do we? 

AND SO IT GOES…when I saw the hand painted coffins for the children in Uvalde, my heart skipped a beat. If we need to paint Disney princess and Dora the Explorer on a tiny coffin to make it more palatable for the family to bury their innocent child, who was robbed of a future, we have seriously failed each other long before that horrific site. Every single child in this country deserves more than thoughts and prayers after the fact. They require our passion, protection, outrage and united voices demanding change. Please join me on my soap box and make some noise…we owe it to our children.