By Rosetta Miller-Perry
The horrendous mass shooting Monday at the Covenant Church and private school made Nashville the latest city to suffer the worse nightmare of innocent children and adults being brutally murdered by an armed killer and shockingly a female.
But what too many people in this nation, Tennessee and Nashville do not want to admit or acknowledge, is that pro-gun policies are responsible for all these tragedies. These policies kill our children and adults. Remember, 348,000 students have experienced gun violence in school in this nation since Columbine.
Republican legislators not only in Tennessee but nearly half of all states have passed laws making weapons access so easy that any mentally ill or suicidal nut can obtain them legally.
The crazed person who killed six of our people Monday, had three weapons, two of them assault guns legally purchased while President Biden’s proposed assault weapons ban remains in limbo. Congress, or more accurately the Republican controlled House, sits by, and does nothing as the plague of gun violence and mass shootings continues throughout this nation. Those Racist should stop playing politics with our children’s lives. I firmly believe that If a mass shooting incident kill one of the Congressmen’s family children or their friends’ children, then and only then will we see action. This is not fair to the rest of America. Am I angry at Congress – hell yes!
Last year there were more students either killed or wounded in school and mass shooting incidents than any year on record. I fear for the end of this year!
Even more disturbing is the fact that gun violence has replaced car accidents as the number one cause of death for our children in the United States. Firearm-related deaths are continuing their rapid rise in the U.S., with a new study finding they have overtaken car crashes as the leading cause of “years of potential life lost” due to trauma.
One would think this fact, along with the knowledge that suicidal lunatics are now hitting church properties as well as public schools in urban centers, should be enough to convince these gun loving Republicans that it’s time to take action to save our children’s lives.
But the Tribune isn’t sure that’s enough. What will it take? Targeted attacks that hit some of the fancy schools where they send their children? Then and only then will legislators realize it is way past time to enact sensible and reasonable restrictions on gun access.
Let’s start with a ban on assault weapons NOW! Then more exhaustive background checks on anyone purchasing a gun, and laws requiring citizens who want to carry concealed weapons, at least have no prior criminal records or incidents of mental illness in their medical histories.
We are under no illusions that any of these measures can end gun violence in America, or that they can even be passed. It’s too deeply rooted in too many societal layers to be that easily eradicated.
But as a nation we owe it to our children to at least try and do something to curb these horrific incidents, even if we can’t totally stop them.
My Republican friends – refusing to even address this issue is the worse kind of moral cowardice of any decent being.
But considering how many of these republican legislators continue to back a serial liar with open contempt for the rule of law and disdain for equality and justice, their inaction is no surprise.
Finally, On a per capita basis, the firearm death rate among children in the U.S. is about 7 times the rate of Canada – United States leads the world in children killed by firearms.
