Gun Control Laws

        This morning evil visited Conneticut and brought tragedy with it. More than a dozen children woke up, grabbed their backpacks, hopped on the bus to their elementary school, and were dead before lunch.
        The shooting spree lasted less than 10 minutes, but that was long enough to leave multiple families childless. We are heartbroken, yes, all of us, but in the wake of tragedy comes an opportunity.
        We have the opportunity now to discuss stricter gun laws. I have heard people say now is not the time to discuss the incident at Sandy Hook Elementary School being a precedent for gun laws. I disagree, because ever since Columbine, it should be all we talked about until it changed something.
        If the teachers had been allowed to carry a concealed weapon on the premises this could have ended better. I know some of you are weary of the teachers carrying a handgun would be more volatile, but think about it, it’s never the teachers that shoot up the school, it is always a student or disgruntled former student.
       Jose Luis Nunez had a handgun in order to protect his son. The 4 year-old accidentally shot himself in the face with it in Houston on Tuesday. Joseph V. Loughrey had one for the same reason, and his 7-year-old son, Craig, died on
Saturday outside of Pittsburgh when that handgun accidentally went off while the boy was getting into his safety seat in front of a gun store.
       And that was just this week. The same week that the NRA proudly tweeted it had reached 1.7 million “likes” on Facebook.
        We cherish individuality in America. We see raising children as no one else’s business, and we have never managed to band together as a “parenting” bloc. It is
time. Guns are a parenting issue and we need to control them in the name of the children who died this morning. Even more, we need to do it in the name of their mothers and fathers.
       So cry today. Comfort your kids. Curse, and pray. Then pick up the phone, a pen, a keyboard, or your checkbook and make your demands heard for stricter gun laws. All day and every day. But most especially, today.