Sick Of Mass Shootings? THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
In Texas, 27 people dead, 27 injured. A little over a month ago, in Las Vegas, 58 people dead, over 500 injured.
Let me tell you how this goes (sing along if you know the words):
It will never get better!
After Sandy Hook, we lost any hope of changing anything.
Now is not the time to talk about guns.
He was a lone wolf. No one could have known.
Changing gun laws won’t change anything.
I’m too paralyzed to do anything.
You’ve given up? Because things haven’t worked up until now? How quaint. You’re totally accepting of living your life in fear and exasperation instead of actually trying to change things?
Get over yourself.
Tell me what you have actually done, other than post shit on Facebook about how upset you are. Or ranted to friends. Or felt defeated and fragile and hidden.
You haven’t even begun to fight. Get up and actually do something.
Survivors of gun violence aren’t discouraged. They’re angry. They know the cost of gun violence — to themselves, their families, our society. The 40 parents who lost children at Sandy Hook — whose lives were turned upside down — the ones whom you invoke in your theater of pain and sorrow? They founded Sandy Hook Promise to advocate and educate and try to make sure what happened to their kids doesn’t happen to yours. They did that for you.
Former U.S. Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was injured in a mass shooting at a constituent meet and greet in 2011. What did she do? She founded Americans for Responsible Solutions.
Let that sink in. A woman who was SHOT IN THE HEAD can do something, but you can’t?
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a nonpartisan group, was founded by a mother of five from Indiana. She had her hands full. She had carpools and activities. She had five children! But she did something. And now her organization is the largest counterweight to the NRA in the country. Made up of people just like you and me.
So, are we, as gun violence prevention advocates, disappointed? Yes. We are in as much pain as the rest of you. But we are doing something. We know we can stop this, but as long as you buy the narrative that we cannot, you are holding us back.
So don’t stand back in awe. Don’t stay paralyzed in your pain. Do not accept the role of victim.
And most of all, if you decide to be there, paralyzed, don’t demotivate others by saying we’re done. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Quite respectfully, fuck that.
WE CAN AND ARE DOING SOMETHING. ARE YOU?
ARE
YOU?
Start NOW.
Join @Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America or text READY to 64433.
Text REJECT to 64433 and you’ll be connected with your lawmaker. Ask them to reject the NRA’s dangerous agenda that has kept any meaningful legislation from being passed to keep these kinds of shootings from happening.
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