I’m tired of this
Yesterday there was a mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, involving yet another angry white guy and yet another assault weapon. I feel like I should be offering some passionate and eloquent plea for gun control reform. But to be honest, I’m getting tired of doing it.
I’m tired of even thinking about all these mass shootings. It’s as heartbreaking as it is exhausting. Each time there’s a mass shooting at a school, I fear for my relatives who are teachers. We all have a personal stake in these mass shootings, even if they’re not in our backyards, and even if we don’t know any of the victims personally.
It’s particularly galling that just as we’re getting the country vaccinated and we’re beginning to partially open up society again, the mass shootings have started up like clockwork. We all knew it would happen. But it’s still just frustrating, and it leads to just as much of a feeling of helplessness. I’m just sick of it, as are all of you.
But there is perhaps some reason for hope. When these mass shootings first began happening with regularity fifteen years ago (not coincidentally after the Assault Weapons Ban expired), I would try speaking up on social media about the need for gun control. But even the people who agreed with me would always tell me that “now is not the time” to discuss solutions. When Republican politicians would offer their “thoughts and prayers” while refusing to do anything, I would call them out, and even the people who agreed with me on the issue would tell me I was being divisive.
These days that’s all changed. Each new mass shooting brings loud and immediate calls for gun control reform. And each time politicians offer “thoughts and prayers” in place of a solution, they’re widely lambasted for it. If nothing else, those who see the need for gun control are no longer afraid to seize the conversation.
Liberals aren’t messing around in 2021, so maybe this latest round of tragic and avoidable mass shootings will be what finally prompts gun control to happen. At the moment it seems impossible. But there are things in the COVID relief bill that just got passed that were long considered impossible, so there’s reason to keep fighting. In the meantime, I’m tired of watching innocent American lives continue to be lost.
