After Sandy Hook

To say I have always been an activist would be an understatement.  From a young age, I have been passionate about all things political. I have never owned a gun and have never shot anything bigger than a bb gun.  However, I did marry a hunter so we do have guns in our home.  Gun control and gun laws were not high on my list of wrongs to right.  

December 14, 2012 changed all that.


These brave and precious people changed all that:
- Charlotte Bacon, 2/22/06
- Daniel Barden, 9/25/05
- Rachel Davino, 7/17/83
- Olivia Engel, 7/18/06
- Josephine Gay, 12/11/05
- Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 04/04/06
- Dylan Hockley, 3/8/06
- Dawn Hochsprung, 06/28/65
- Madeleine F. Hsu, 7/10/06
- Catherine V. Hubbard, 6/08/06
- Chase Kowalski, 10/31/05
- Jesse Lewis, 6/30/06
- James Mattioli , 3/22/06
- Grace McDonnell, 12/04/05
- Anne Marie Murphy, 07/25/60
- Emilie Parker, 5/12/06
- Jack Pinto, 5/06/06
- Noah Pozner, 11/20/06
- Caroline Previdi, 9/07/06
- Jessica Rekos, 5/10/06
- Avielle Richman, 10/17/06
- Lauren Rousseau, 6/1982
- Mary Sherlach, 2/11/56
- Victoria Soto, 11/04/85
- Benjamin Wheeler, 9/12/06
- Allison N. Wyatt, 7/03/06

And I am embarrassed that it took this long.  It should have been Columbine that motivated me, or Aurora.  But sometimes the path you take is not straight.

The carnage from mass shootings from 2012:

February 22, 2012—Five people were killed in at a Korean health spa in Norcross, Georgia, when a man opened fire inside the facility in an act suspected to be related to domestic violence.

February 26, 2012—Multiple gunmen began firing into a nightclub crown in Jackson, Tennessee, killing one person and injuring 20 others.

February 27, 2012—Three students at Chardon High School in rural Ohio were killed when a classmate opened fire.

March 8, 2012—Two people were killed and seven wounded at a psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when a gunman entered the hospital with two semiautomatic handguns and began firing.

March 31, 2012—A gunman opened fire on a crowd of mourners at a North Miami, Florida, funeral home, killing two people and injuring 12 others.

April 2, 2012—A 43-year-old former student at Oikos University in Oakland, California, walked into his former school and killed seven people, “execution-style.” Three people were wounded.

April 6, 2012—Two men went on a deadly shooting spree in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shooting black men at random in an apparently racially motivated attack. Three men died and two were wounded.

May 29, 2012—A man in Seattle, Washington, opened fire in a coffee shop and killed five people and then himself.

July 9, 2012—At a soccer tournament in Wilmington, Delaware, three people were killed, including a 16-year-old player and the event organizer, when multiple gunmen began firing shots, apparently targeting the organizer.

July 20, 2012—James Holmes enters a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises and opens fire with a semi-automatic weapon; twelve people are killed and fifty-eight are wounded.

August 5, 2012—A white supremacist and former Army veteran shot six people to death inside a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before killing himself.

August 14, 2012—Three people were killed at Texas A&M University when a 35-year-old man went on a shooting rampage; one of the dead was a police officer.

September 27, 2012—A 36-year-old man who had just been laid off from Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis, Minnesota, entered his former workplace and shot five people to death, and wounded three others before killing himself.

October 21, 2012—45-year-old Radcliffe Frankin Haughton shot three women to death, including his wife, Zina Haughton, and injured four others at a spa in Brookfield, Wisconsin, before killing himself.

December 11, 2012—A 22-year-old began shooting at random at a mall near Portland, Oregon, killing two people and then himself.

December 14, 2012—One man, and possibly more, murders a reported twenty-six people at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, including twenty children, before killing himself. 

(Resource: The Nation Magazine)

Like many Americans, the age of the victims, and the number of victims at Sandy Hook has been overwhelming.  I have cried and cried.  And now, instead of crying, I am motivated to channel my energy into seeing the laws of this country change when it comes to guns, access to guns, and mental health services.

One of the first organizations I have joined is The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. 

• The Brady Campaign and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has a long and rich history of working to save lives.
• Mark Borinsky, who had been robbed and nearly killed at gunpoint, founded the organization in 1974 as the National Council to Control Handguns. Pete Shields became Chairman in 1978 following the murder of his twenty-three-year-old son, Nick, in 1974. The organization was renamed Handgun Control, Inc (HCI) in 1980.
• In 1983, the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence (CPHV) was founded as an education outreach organization dedicated to reducing gun violence. In 1989, CPHV establishes the Legal Action Project to take the fight against gun violence to the courts.
• In 2001, HCI was renamed the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and CPHV was renamed Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in honor of Jim and Sarah Brady for their commitment and courage to make America safer. (The Brady Center website)

They are a sound and well established organization that has been making slow but steady strides in revising our gun laws for years.  I hope you will join me in supporting them.