This Isn't Sports
Didn’t a little piece of you die in Newtown?
A little piece of me died there.
Babies.
They were just babies.
Cut down like wheat
Babies
Six and seven years old
Still learning how to read and write
Big block letters
Unicorns and baseball cards
Teachers
Jumping in front of a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle
A Glock 20SF handgun
Hoping to save one
How did we not all die in Newtown?
How did any of us walk away unchanged?
Didn’t a little piece of you die in Tucson?
A little piece of me died there
Christina Taylor-Green
Nine years old
Dreamed of changing the world
Came to see someone changing the world
Bullets sprayed across a parking lot
A Glock 19 semi-automatic with a 33-round magazine
Six dead
A day later the parking lot was a crime scene
Surrounded by yellow police tape
While onlookers took selfies
And looked for the blood in the pavement
How did we not all die in Tucson?
How did any of us walk away unchanged?
Didn’t a little piece of you die in Las Vegas?
In Virginia Beach?
In Chippewa Falls?
In San Jose and White Swan and Sebring and Aurora
In Yountville and Paintsville and Nashville and Asheville
In Cleveland and Chicago and Detroit
Just as in Lutcher and Gravette and Ascension Parish
In a Pittsburgh Synagogue
And a Charleston church
And a Sutherland Springs church
And an Annapolis newspaper office
And an Orlando nightclub
And Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
And an El Paso Wal-Mart
And just outside a Dayton Bar
What do you do after dying so many small deaths?
Where can you stand in the howling wind?
Nothing can be done
Nothing will be done
If we didn’t do anything after Newtown
If we didn’t do anything after Parkland
If we didn’t do anything after Las Vegas
What do you do after dying so many small deaths?
Do you just keep on dying?
What to write? I'm on a dozen edits of this first sentence - everything is inadequate or mean. but F' it. I'm a non-American and I do not live in America - so I shake my head at this "unsolvable" problem that pretty much every other country has solved.
As a non-American I can't help fix it but I will offer some small advice - thoughts and prayers are worthless, man up and take and demand action and hold accountable.
Thank you Joe for not letting this pass.
These events will continue as long as people continue to state that guns are not the core issue. President Trump will always refuse to do anything about it because it would mean losing votes. Those who quote the Second Amendment forget that it was drafted well before assault rifles were made. Based on current statistics, there will be more than 120 mass shootings this year. For goodness sake, please do something about gun ownership in the US.