25 and an unborn child killed – November 5, 2017 58 killed – October 1, 2017 49 killed, 58 injured – June 12, 2016 14 killed, 22 injured – December 2, 2015 9 killed – October 1, 2015 9 killed – June 17, 2015 12 killed – September 16, 2013 27 killed – December 14, 2012 12 killed – July 20, 2012
No one is safe. Not me and not even you. A class of first graders dead at their desks in seconds when all they wanted to do was learn how to read, write, and go to recess. A crowd of country music lovers murdered while listening to their favorite music. A congregation of loyal church goers shot in the pews, I guess not even God could save them from an automatic rifle. And where do I fall into all of this? I’ve found myself not even able to mourn for I am numb to it all. No one is safe and no one seems to care. No one is safe and the leader of my country is more engrossed in grabbing women by the pussy than helping. Where do I find my voice when it seems like nothing can be done to help? Do I go on acting as if nothing is wrong? What if next time I become one of another number of bodies added to the death toll, should I care then? How dare we call ourselves the land of the free. How are we free when we are not even safe to go to the new Batman movie without people being lifelessly gunned down? How dare I sit here and tell you that we are the home of the brave when we are too cowardly to face the fact that people can be murdered by the masses and nothing is being done to stop it. How do I sit here in good conscience when I know that this isn’t right? These killings don’t impact my day to day life and that is the most sickening part of it all. The people who are dead are just as a group of faces shown on TV that I will never know, and I don’t even flinch because I am so exhausted from the hurt from the last mass shooting. My relationships with mass shootings has been the most solid and steady one during my coming of age. I can always know that there will be another one. The satirical blog The Onion produced an article after the most recent mass shooting titled “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”. When a satirical blog is able to hold such validity to a serious issue, this is when we really have to question ourselves as a people, and as a country. I am not just ashamed, but I am disappointed, because I know we are better than this. The feeling of helplessness is particularly the hardest to swallow. The feeling of knowing you can’t bring those 20 children from Sandy Hook back to life. The feeling of not being able to protect another group of children from it happening again. The feeling of not being able to protect your Mom, your Dad, or your best friend from being gunned down at any time, is soul crushing. Yet I can’t lose faith because this is just the same as giving up, and then nothing will truly change. Whenever I am hurting or feeling lost, I remember some poignant words that my mother has constantly told me throughout my life. “We are here on this Earth to help each other, when someone is not okay you HELP them, because that is our purpose living here on Earth.”. In a country looking for guidance I look to a section from the Declaration of Independence stating, “But when a long train of abuses, usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, the events is a design to reduce them on their absolute despotism and is their right and their duty to throw off such government and provide new guards for their new security.” When something is wrong, those who CAN do something to help, have the RESPONSIBILITY to help. This includes me, this includes you, this includes everyone who recognizes that something is wrong. My country cannot heal until we learn to help each other. We cannot heal as a country until we no longer see these mass shootings as a problem for others, but a problem that hurts all of us.
Maddie Sager
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