More guns is never the answer to the gun problem
KAMLOOPS — I remember when the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened. I remember looking at my youngest son’s hands as he was drawing right next to me. They were little, the roundness of his fingers busy and sweet, and most of all safely doing what any kid his age should. He was six and a half, the age of the 20 children who had been killed that morning, together with six adults, by a seriously troubled young man, who possessed many guns, including the one he used that day to commit the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.
Questions abounded then and still do. I failed then as I still do today to understand how parents and family members of the victims keep on going after such tragedies. Not only that, how do they keep going knowing that the horrible event that took their loved ones away was not the last one but one in a string of many.
As of now, not even two months into the new year, there have been eight school shootings in the U.S., the last one on February 14 at a high school in Florida, where 17 people were killed and 15 injured. The shooter, once again, a troubled and angry young man, who possessed many guns, assault rifles included.
If you check the news of the aftermath, you’ll come across student and staff survivors, family members and law enforcement officers, some angry and at times teary-eyed, all asking why such tragedies are not prevented and vowing to do all they can to make things better.