Twenty Little Angels

 

Tonight I pulled out an article I wrote for the local newspaper when I was sixteen. I was on a high school internship and my assignment was to write a “News Views” piece. I chose to write about the mass shooting at Columbine high school that had happened days before. In the article, I grappled with the obvious questions of WHY and HOW.

Tonight, now 30 years old, I sit in front of my computer grappling with the exact same questions after the heartbreaking murder of 20 innocent children and six adults today at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

In the thirteen years since Columbine, there have been over 40 school shootings in the United States.

40.

Over 40 times, someone has walked into a school with a gun and murdered innocent people.

I was consumed with this devastating tragedy today. My heart bled for the parents and families and children I saw on the news coverage. The unimaginable thought of those parents dropping their little ones off at school today, where they would build gingerbread houses, and then never seeing those little faces and bright eyes again.  Twenty tiny, innocent angels that won’t get to have Christmas with their families this year, that won’t get to play, and grow up, and go on adventures, and fall in love, and have children of their own. Their beautiful lives were stolen from them.

It is too much to comprehend.

It is heart wrenching.

It isn’t fair.

I watched my Twitter and Facebook feed as people reacted. Words of shock and sadness, words of condolence, words of anger, words encouraging silence and reverence for lives lost, heated words of argument over politics and gun control laws.

We are all heartbroken and we are all reacting, but I know none of us want any more innocent lives lost to tragic events like this. There is not one answer to the WHY’S and the HOW’s. These are muddy waters. Yes, I believe restricting access to firearms will help, but this also goes SO much deeper than that. Mental health issues, bullying; we need to get to the root of these people’s pain before they decide to deal with it themselves by (easily) buying a weapon and committing a mass murder. In my opinion, not allowing these guns to be readily available to these unstable and vulnerable people is number one on the agenda right now.

Of all the words I read today, I think Mayor Bloomberg’s are important to share:

With all the carnage from gun violence in our country, it’s still almost impossible to believe that a mass shooting in a kindergarten class could happen. It has come to that. Not even kindergarteners learning their A,B,Cs are safe. We heard after Columbine that it was too soon to talk about gun laws. We heard it after Virginia Tech. After Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek. And now we are hearing it again. For every day we wait, 34 more people are murdered with guns. Today, many of them were five-year olds. President Obama rightly sent his heartfelt condolences to the families in Newtown. But the country needs him to send a bill to Congress to fix this problem. Calling for ‘meaningful action’ is not enough. We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership – not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today. This is a national tragedy and it demands a national response. My deepest sympathies are with the families of all those affected, and my determination to stop this madness is stronger than ever.”

We MUST act. We must BE a part of the change we wish to see in the world. Don’t be silent. Don’t leave it up to everyone else to get it sorted out. Let’s DO something to help. And let’s be kind to one another, because that is where it all starts.

As said in a Washington Post article: So don’t just pray, don’t just hug, don’t just post on social media how sad it all is, don’t just watch the news and say “what can you do, these things happen.” Take a stand, write a letter, donate to an anti-gun lobby, start a petition do something do anything to say enough is enough and we will not tolerate one more dead child, one more lost life and any more excuses for inaction.

Tonight my heart is with those that lost their lives today, and their families and loved ones. May you rest in peace little angels.