Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of guest commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.
•••
I’m a parent of an Annunciation student. My daughter was in the church when shots flew through the stained glass on Aug. 27, injuring or killing several of her friends. We’re so grateful for the swift and heroic efforts of school staff, law enforcement and emergency response personnel that no doubt saved so many.
My daughter was miraculously spared physical injury, but I quite literally write this between bouts of quelling her newfound fears of any sudden noise, being alone and even being near a church. I write this as I attempt to formulate an answer to a devastating realization she made as she wept, scared to go to sleep, when I had attempted to explain that she was safe here in our home: “I don’t think anyone is safe, anywhere.” We’re broken.
To answer the question posed in Kavita Kumar’s recent column, no, my thoughts on the banning of assault rifles and high-capacity magazines and other weapons so commonly used to slaughter and maim children have not changed following this shooting. I’ve been in support of efforts to ban assault-style rifles for as long as I’ve been conscious of the unnecessary deaths and suffering wrought at their hand. As in, since I was a child myself. I was born in the early 1990s. The only era I’ve known is one where school shootings in the U.S. are as common and seemingly inevitable as filing taxes. And now it has happened here, as it was bound to.
Unlike so many of our purported public servants and especially our conservative politicians, I was able to ascertain that the murder of innocent children with guns was bad when I was very young. I was even able to understand that it logically follows we should do everything in our power as a body politic to prevent these mass shootings from happening.
We’ve all heard the naive refrains in situations like this. “Don’t tread on me,” or “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Logically extrapolating from endless mass-shooting examples, I have an amendment. “Guns are constantly used to kill people, and people with access to assault rifles sure have a propensity to kill kids on purpose.”
As such, to any Minnesota politician, lobbyist or even generic gun-rights advocate not in full support of a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines in our great country; to anyone who does not plan on supporting legislation restricting access to these wholly unnecessary weapons, know this:
