GUN COMMENTARY
The Mass Shooting in Texas and Our Right to Bear Arms
What’s it going to take America?
As a parent there is nothing more tragic than seeing a child die. My kids are roughly the same age as many of the teens that were shot in Oxford, Michigan in November 2021. They are older than the elementary school children who were just senselessly killed in Texas.
What’s tragic is that these mass shootings have become a common occurrence in the U.S. Every day roughly 8 children die from gun violence and another 32 are injured. Americans see a regular feed of headlines in the news each day reminding them of all the lives that have been lost. We are the only country on the planet that has had a mass shooting every year for the last 20 years. We are also the only country to do active shooting drills in our schools.
That says something.
And yet we always turn back to the sanctity of the Second Amendment. We unwaveringly uphold the right to bear arms. We turn a blind eye to the fact that this amendment was written as we were emerging from a Revolutionary War and had an overwhelmingly rural society that had to hunt for food. We gloss over the fact that gun ownership was never really the God-given right of every American as we like to profess — because African Americans and women…
