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PARKLAND, Florida — At dusk on Sunday night, Cameron Kasky was taking a brief, quiet moment for himself. He lay on a picnic table in a park not far from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a gunman opened fire Wednesday, killing 17 of his classmates and teachers, and wounding 14 others.

Kasky was exhausted. He estimated that he’d done more than 50 interviews since the shooting, all to promote a movement against gun violence that he and his young friends have spearheaded in the wake of their school’s tragedy.

“We, as a community, needed one thing,” he said of his desire to form the group to give his friends a purpose amid the grief.

Continue reading.

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Chris Hayes compiled all the times that Paul Ryan has said we shouldn’t make knee jerk decisions after tragedies.

Apparently the Speaker of the House permanently thinks all these requests for action are knee jerk.

Columbine was nineteen years ago.

The kids at Parkland and every other high school in the country have grown up with shooter drills and low grade ptsd.

I don’t know a single kid that doesn’t clock the exits in a room they enter. That’s the impact Columbine has had.

It isn’t a knee jerk reaction anymore.

It’s the long over due correction of a national mistake.

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Sometimes I catch a little flack for saying, “Republicans are evil” but nah … I never feel bad for saying it because it’s true.

How heartless do you have to be to block common sense gun regulation right in the faces of the students who recently survived a mass shooting?

Civilians do not need an AR-15. Anyone who believes that the 2nd Amendment means owning absolutely ANY weapon you want is childish and emblematic of white male entitlement. And yeah, I’m keying in on white men. They’re the overwhelming majority of mass school shooters. And no, I’m not worried about “being nice” or hurting a gun owner’s delicate little, snowflake feelings. It’s past time for all of that.

Keep in mind: Florida’s Governor Rick Scott and Florida’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi - they both pushed to lower the age requirement for buying AR-15s. The Parkland mass shooter was 19-years old. Not old enough to buy liquor, but old enough to buy a lethal weapon of mass destruction in the state of Florida. And Donald Trump’s federal budget cuts funding for mental health services and also cuts funding for background checks. Republicans obviously DO NOT care about “the children” or they wouldn’t have spat in their faces.

The NRA is a death-cult. The Republican Party is evil. Republican voters are their simple minded, easily manipulated death-cult followers.

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rest in peace aaron💞

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The sites of four school shootings which left a collective 65 people dead:

Columbine - Colorado - 1999 - 13 dead

Sandy Hook - Connecticut - 2012 - 26 dead

Umpqua Community College - Oregon - 2015 - 9 dead

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School - Florida - 2018 - 17 dead

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“He bought a gun at 18, but if he wanted to buy a beer he’d have to be 21.”

- BBC reporter throwing shade

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an open letter to U.S. Congress members

The other night I heard a group of Conservative lawmakers claim that compromise was impossible on the issue of gun control because no one ever proposed any reasonable legislation. I decided to accept the challenge. 

After last week’s tragic events in Parkland, Florida, I decided to speak with my legislators about an issue very close to me. This will be the first time I’ve ever openly discussed my greatest fear, and I can only hope our leaders are willing to listen, if only as a courtesy for a fellow human being.  

I stayed home from school one day in 8th grade. Just a low-grade fever, but my mom was a single parent and I was 14, so it made more sense for me to stay at home alone. I was near the end of my last semester at middle school, filled with the typical adolescent dread for the upcoming change to high school.

It was April 20th, 1999. 

The day Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris walked into Columbine High School and attacked their classmates. I didn’t understand at first why every channel on the television was playing the same thing, but once I realized what was happening, I couldn’t look away. I saw other high schoolers running out of their classrooms, spattered in blood, crying and screaming. Shamefully, the news anchors kept throwing them on air, sobbing, recounting the tales of how Eric and Dylan had looked their victims right in the eye when they asked each one ‘Do you believe in God?’ One girl frantically screamed, “She said yes,” over and over, shaking, as she remembered watching her friend, Cassie Bernall, get shot directly in the face. Someone finally escorted her off the air when they realized she couldn’t say anything else.

They showed bullet casings, red-stained walls and hallways. Bloody backpacks with school supplies falling from the tattered bullet holes. I remember that the blood seemed to pool the worst in the corners, where the killers had herded the students like cattle. I’d never known the kind of evil I had just witnessed. Would there be more? Will we have to practice drills for this in high school? (My heart breaks to say ‘yes.’) I had never felt such a paralysis of fear at the thought.

I was certain that I couldn’t be alone in my horror, so when I went to church that Sunday I spoke to others about the incident. My youth pastor explained to us that Cassie’s death was meant to be, to spread the word of Christ. I saw an entire congregation of adults dismiss the massacre as an uncontrollable act of God, and even at 14 years old I was uneasy with that logic. I was wrong. We were alone.

From that day forward, it was a constant, nagging presence that followed wherever I went. I scheduled classes based on their location and how safe I perceived them to be at the time. I can still recall most of the emergency exits from my high school because of how I often I practiced the scenario in my mind, and I always checked which doors were locked, in case I needed an unlocked one to escape. When I practiced sports, I always made sure the gates were secured and I never left my car further than I could sprint during practice. There was never a day of school that went by in my life again where I did not think about the possibility of having to defend myself at some point during the day.

Now, as a 33-year-old adult, the fear has carried on with me to movie theaters and festivals, conferences and trade shows like a dull, relentless itch in the back of my head. I fear for my loved ones in school, broken-hearted that they have to see the same news on their phone screens that I saw seventeen years ago. 

What have we done to keep more children from getting hurt? We’ve relaxed the gun laws. It’s hard for me to even imagine having children of my own because I can’t bear the thought of bringing an innocent life into a world where a murderer can randomly shoot them dead in the safety of their own classroom. All because our politicians can’t be bothered.

A new generation is now watching their leaders ignore this problem while their peers die beside them. I am writing on behalf of them, for the scared children that go to our public schools nearly every day. For Cassie Bernall, who was brave enough to stand up for her beliefs, but was quickly forgotten by those who were willing to use her story for their own narrative. Someone even wrote a hit country song, the title taken from her grieving friend’s mantra of “She Said Yes,” profiting from her terror.

Our dead deserved better.

Sandy Hook’s victims can no longer speak but I will not allow them to be alone in their horror, as my generation once was. The MSDHS survivors in Parkland are already calling out for help, but who is willing to listen? Governor Scott? Senator Rubio? 

One of the repeated excuses echoed by Republicans is that no one can provide a reasonable compromise in form of legislation. Since the lawmakers are so baffled as to how this can be accomplished, I’ve taken the liberty to compose some suggestions for you. Cassie’s Law, if you will, since we owe her that much for ridiculing her death with a hokey, exploitative ballad.

Cassie’s Law:

Reinstate the Assault Weapons Ban

No child should have to worry about automatic or semi-automatic weapons. It is a uniquely American problem that innocent children should never have to deal with. No hunter, gatherer, or family patriarch will be stopped from protecting their property without these weapons.

Restrict the age of purchase for firearms to 21 

We have seen time and time again, a young, disenfranchised male in their teenage prime, purchase weapons capable of mass injury as an emotional reaction to an otherwise normal life experience. Has Romeo + Juliet taught us nothing? Sometimes, teenagers can be irrational.

Hunter Safety/License Regulations

Instead of relying on state-mandated health professionals to independently evaluate someone’s mental state, the community could be self-regulated. If we had Federal regulations in place to ensure gun purchasers were required to take a safety class or even required to obtain a license, the instructors could easily be given the task of evaluating whether an individual was mentally unfit after watching them perform. This would also create a need for new jobs. (We still like jobs, right?)

Any of these suggestions would have impeded Nikolas Cruz. What if you could have stopped him from killing those seventeen high schoolers? Do you really value your pride and ego more than the safety of our children?

Mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters alike are mourning the death of more school kids. We can’t afford to let them die. We can’t afford to let sociopaths keep having access to weapons capable of this kind of destruction. It’s not a partisan issue. Addressing mental health issues is simply not enough. Adding metal detectors and armed guards are expenses that the education department can’t afford, especially not under the Trump administration. Also, we’ve got enough prisons; no need to turn our public schools into penitentiaries. 

Congress: Stand up for our children - with ACTIONS, not just words. Your condolences haven’t stopped a single mass murder, but your actions just might. Help us make America safe for once.

Signed,

An American Voter

A copy of this letter is being sent to every office of every public official in the state of which I reside. Another copy of this letter has been emailed to each of them, as well as circulated on the Representative’s social media. 

A thank you to everyone who has contacted their Congressmen over this issue. 

Available in a google doc here, if you’d like to share with your own Representatives.