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We Can't Afford Another Moment of Silence

When I first heard the chilling news about the Orlando nightclub massacre, I didn’t react with tears. Those came later that day when I ran into a friend and we just looked at each other, hugged, and cried. As fellow parents, citizens, human beings, we both felt the overwhelming grief of yet another horrifying hate crime/mass murder—the biggest by gunfire in our nation’s history.

No, my initial reaction was frustration and anger. I immediately thought about how better background checks, longer waiting periods for purchasing guns, not allowing someone on a terrorist watch list to purchase a weapon, making it illegal to own rapid-fire assault weapons, etc, etc. could have seriously hindered this seriously disturbed person’s access to the firearms that created this level of carnage.

My blood boiled when I thought about how hard it was to vote in the primaries this year; the endless lines some students waited on and how much paperwork they had to fill out just to cast a ballot. I also thought about how much harder it is to obtain a driver’s license than a weapon—that it could be that much easier to kill someone than to vote or drive.

This nightmare that struck the gay nightclub Pulse, leaving 49 dead and another 53 injured, was beyond tragic. This was a disastrous, preventable event.

As Baby Boomers, we are the generation that said no to war, that stood for “peace, love, and understanding.” When did we become the generation that has allowed stopping the deaths of innocent civilians to become a partisan political issue? When did we become so complacent, fixated on what won’t work rather than what will work?

I emailed my 29-year-old son, who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, soon after the shooting to see how he was doing, if he knew anyone personally affected. He lived in Orlando several years ago, a block from the club, and one of his best friends lives directly across from it. Here’s the crux of what he had to say:

“Yet another nauseating and preventable tragedy that will again yield a slew of social media noise (as long at it stays ‘trending’) yet no change to policy.”

It made me sad to think our children are so discouraged, and have no faith that their leaders, their elders, will do anything to create positive change or have the guts to challenge the status quo and agree on reasonable gun safety reform laws.

Here in Connecticut we can be proud to have some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, such as requiring firearms dealers to obtain a license and mandate background checks for all firearm sales at gun shows. Of course, for our elected officials to implement these new laws, we had to first suffer the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2013—the deadliest mass shooting at a grade school or high school in U.S. history and the third-deadliest mass shooting by a single person in U.S. history.

But it’s not enough if other states don’t follow suit.

Multiple studies conclude that the U.S. has more guns and gun deaths than any other developed country. The Vietnam War killed over 58,000 American service men and women between 1957 and 1975—less than the number of civilians killed with guns in the U.S. in an average two-year period.

It’s simply outrageous.

The idea that armed civilians will get the shooter before the shooter gets them is also a mistaken notion.

In an article by Evan Osnos titled “Making a Killing: The business and politics of selling guns” that just appeared in the June 27 issue of the New Yorker, he discusses a 30-year study by a Stanford law professor that examined the effect of concealed-carry laws on crime and found that the laws led to “substantially higher rates” of aggravated assault, rape, robbery, and murder.

Violence begets more violence.

“The chances of being killed by a mass shooter are lower than the chances of being struck by lightning, or of dying from tuberculosis,” Osnos says. “The chance of a homicide by a firearm in the home nearly doubles the moment that a firearm crosses the threshold.”

Kudos goes to Senator Chris Murphy for getting the ball rolling with the recent 15-hour filibuster to address this issue head on. And to Congressman Jim Himes, representing Connecticut’s 4th district, who, along with several other senators, refused to give lip service to the victims and their families with yet another silent prayer, followed by no course of action. Himes posted on his Twitter that he will not attend another moment of silence, calling it “an abomination.”

And, Congressional Democrats, fed up with their inability to get a bill passed that would prevent suspected terrorists from buying guns, staged an old-fashioned sit-in for 25 hours on the House floor. (How ‘60s is that?) But the Senate ignored the will of a majority of Americans—who, according to recent polls say they want stiffer gun laws— by failing to pass common-sense gun reforms in the wake of the Orlando travesty. And now the Senate is putting off debating gun control to “other matters” until “sometime” after the July 4 holiday.

So what can we do as individuals beside ring our hands, accept that nothing will change, and wait for the next time?

We can vote for the politicians who support gun reform and stand up to the gun lobby; we can make our voices heard through local and national advocacy organizations to stop gun violence.

We can refuse to accept that we can’t do anything but leave an increasingly violent and uncertain country to our children and grandchildren. We can do better, we’re capable of doing so much better, we must do better.

Amy J. Barry is a Baby Boomer, who lives in Stony Creek with her husband and assorted pets. She writes features and reviews for Shore Publishing newspapers and is an expressive arts educator. Email her at aimwrite@snet.net or at www.aimwrite-ct.net. Read more My Generation columns online at www.zip06.com