Lucy Reflects

In light of the recent tragedy we need to take action against gun violence.

I can clearly remember my two biggest fears when I was a youngster – monsters under my bed and quicksand. Lucky for me, neither were an actual threat because monsters don’t exist and I most likely wasn’t ever going to walk into a pile of quicksand.

Today I worry my kids will be shot in their school by a military-style gun that can fall virtually into anyone’s hands. Unlike quicksand and monsters, this actually is a possibility.

As I read through the news, I listen to people lament about what we can do, people are scared their guns are going to be taken away, we need more mental health support, thoughts and prayers, parents are to blame, and on and on it goes.

So generally speaking, the first mass school shooting happened in 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado. It’ll soon be 20 years and nothing has been done to protect our children. NOTHING has been done. NOTHING IN 20 YEARS. We haven’t changed our gun laws, done minimal work to aid the mental health epidemic (in fact we’ve cut funding for it) and we’ve certainly done nothing to prevent these shootings from happening. Twenty years, folks. And we still haven’t figured it out.

Fast forward to 2012 when 20 children between the ages of six and seven were shot and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary. So … that wasn’t quite enough for our congress to make substantial changes either. Let me say that again, they were six and seven years old and they were brutally murdered in their school.

Have you ever stood by a parent when they learn they lost their child? I have. It is unequivocally the most heart-wrenching experience I’ve ever had to go through. It’s unexplainable the hurt that fills your body and soul to its core.

We can shout our thoughts and prayers from the roof tops, lower our flags to half staff, share articles and pictures on social media, but it feels like no one is taking action to stop the violence.

“I feel sad for the parents of every other school shooting. Like their child’s lives changed nothing,” Whitney texted me today. “How can we not care about dead kids? I don’t get it.”

I’ve never seen someone get shot directly in the face and I’ve never had to watch a person bleed to death as they lay on top of me. But school students are watching it unfold in front of their very eyes every few days in this country. We watch as kids beg for help, speaking to media with the valor most adults don’t possess, hours after they witnessed a massacre. Maybe we should let kids run this country because sometimes I think they have more strength and intelligence than most adults.

I mean, is this who we have become? We’d rather argue about logistics of actually how many shootings there were since the first of the year? Was it 12 or 18? News flash folks, it should be zero. We argue about our right to own military-style guns. Guess what? NO ONE NEEDS THEM. PERIOD. We argue about helping kids who struggle with mental illness and providing them with the tools to heal and come out better in the end. But we just assume someone is going to do it all for us. How many school shootings will it take? Which brings me to my next point, someone did try to report Nikolas Cruz to the FBI and he fell through the cracks. In a tweet, Donald Trump wrote “Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities again and again!”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW.

It seems like the adults are just becoming OK with the way our country has turned. You can argue back and forth about mental illness and gun control but the fact remains – our country has the worst school shootings in the world and I guess we’re just going to throw our hands up in the air and say, “Oh well!”

Oh wait. Nevermind. You can’t give up on something you never even tried to fix.

We need to pay attention to each other and not just our own kids. We need to stop criticizing parents and other kids and take care of each other. We need to vote. We need to support those who are actually working to make a change. We need to slow down and consider our children in this country. Give our children a voice because they are the ones in danger. We need to be the change we wish to see. We need to fix this problem. Once and for all. Never in my childhood did I feel I wasn’t protected by the adults around me. I’m not sure I can say the same today. We need to take action and change that.

We’d like to hear from you, share your thoughts on how we can make sure our children are safe.