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On June 12, 2016, I was having a day to do whatever I pleased. I was on vacation in Greece, at a beautiful resort on the Peloponnese. Within the laws of the land, I had freedom. With my time, I chose to relax in my room, have lunch with my mother, swim at the beach, spend time in a hot tub, and relax some more. By dinner, this image of paradise free from responsibility was shattered. The night before, thousands of miles away in my home country, the United States of America, forty-nine people had some free time as well, and with it, they decided to go to the Pulse Bar in Orlando, Florida. Going out was the last thing those forty-nine innocent souls did. I suddenly felt very responsible, in the sense that I couldn’t just sit here and take in this news from a comfortable distance. The following paragraphs are from that night. I had to write my anger down, and I hope that they hold some meaning for others who join me in my sentiment.
Omar Mateen, the shooter, used an AR-15 as his primary weapon. If the AR-15 sounds familiar, then maybe you remember it as the type of gun Adam Lanza used in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. Having lived in Fairfield County all my life, living an hour’s drive from Newtown, I take the denial of the event’s existence, the overall complacency of our Congress, and the greed of the gun industry as a personal insult. This preventable bloodshed made me appreciate the fact that I was able to have lunch with my mother, knowing that some mothers had just lost their sons.
If you have read the previous sentence, you may have noticed the word, “preventable.” Before its expiration in 2004, the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act banned semiautomatic assault weapons. Thanks to NRA, the act was not renewed. This is not to say that this shooting would not have happened, but it is important to note that a less efficient gun would kill fewer people in the same amount of time.
The gun industry, powerfully lobbied for by the NRA, has brainwashed millions of Americans to believe that freedom is measured in the quantity of guns and the quality of their efficiency, and as a result, they are recklessly available on the civilian market. The NRA preys on the fears and fragile self-esteems of individuals who feel that the only path to being respected is having a tool to scare others out of offering anything but respect. In reality the NRA has divided this country in half. Those that are pro-gun reform, like me, are baffled, wondering, who are these other Americans, unmoved by the fact that their notion of “freedom” is soaked in the blood of innocent children? And with even more disgust for the lobby itself: Who are these avaricious creeps that have hijacked the meaning of freedom to defend their profits? Most importantly, with all this evil, what does freedom mean?
I am confident that an essential meaning of freedom is safety. The farther I am from an AR-15, the less I have to worry about being shot on my night out. The protection of my life is the protection of my liberty to pursue happiness. I wish I could walk by my former first grade classroom without thinking about twenty dead first graders. I wish I could go to a movie theater and not think about the Aurora, Colorado shooting. And when I am old enough to go to a nightclub, I wish not the be reminded of the massacre in Orlando. Of course, I must be careful of what I wish for, because not thinking about these things would be as harmful to the cause of gun safety as a complacent congressman, who awaits reelection instead of promoting a better society.
I began to imagine myself in the situation of a patron at the Pulse Nightclub during the shooting. My imagination showed me having a gun with which to surprise Omar when he came towards my hiding spot. But on any other night, why would I be bringing my gun to a bar? This is the reason: the option for safety that the NRA has offered is the exact option the gun industry wants as the only option, which is to buy a gun. In the current set-up, blood-soaked money continues to flow into the blood-soaked pockets of gun-industry executives.
But there is an another way. To counter this gross moral failing, it is time to pass a bill over the voices and money of the gun lobby. That bill could come in many forms, a buyback of AR-15s, a limit on the size of magazine clips available to civilians, or maybe some universal background checks, so Omar Mateen, who was already on the FBI’s terrorist watch-list, can’t buy one on the open market. Any of these bills would stop the flow of guns into the hands of people that are more likely to go on a killing rampage. Congress just needs to pick one and pass it.
I know that I am not alone; senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal of my home state of Connecticut have shown that they too take gun violence and the greed of the gun lobby personally. Hilary has pledged to stop people on the terrorist watch-list from getting guns and to close the gun-show loophole. With the help of the other 533 members of congress, many of whom are like-minded, many of whom, however, turn a blind eye to America’s suffering, I am sure that we will one day have justice, for the forty-nine lost in Orlando, the twenty-six lost in Newtown, the thirteen lost at Columbine, and the hundreds of thousands more that we have lost to gun violence since the NRA and many members of Congress became the gun-industry’s right hand. The question is this: when will complacent members of congress and the pricks that sustain them realize that in America, defending the profits of few means nothing compared to defending the lives of all?
On June 12, 2016, I was having a day to do whatever I pleased. I was on vacation in Greece, at a beautiful resort on the Peloponnese. Within the laws of the land, I had freedom. With my time, I chose to relax in my room, have lunch with my mother, swim at the beach, spend time in a hot tub, and relax some more. By dinner, this image of paradise free from responsibility was shattered. The night before, thousands of miles away in my home country, the United States of America, forty-nine people had some free time as well, and with it, they decided to go to the Pulse Bar in Orlando, Florida. Going out was the last thing those forty-nine innocent souls did. I suddenly felt very responsible, in the sense that I couldn’t just sit here and take in this news from a comfortable distance. The following paragraphs are from that night. I had to write my anger down, and I hope that they hold some meaning for others who join me in my sentiment.
Omar Mateen, the shooter, used an AR-15 as his primary weapon. If the AR-15 sounds familiar, then maybe you remember it as the type of gun Adam Lanza used in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. Having lived in Fairfield County all my life, living an hour’s drive from Newtown, I take the denial of the event’s existence, the overall complacency of our Congress, and the greed of the gun industry as a personal insult. This preventable bloodshed made me appreciate the fact that I was able to have lunch with my mother, knowing that some mothers had just lost their sons.
If you have read the previous sentence, you may have noticed the word, “preventable.” Before its expiration in 2004, the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act banned semiautomatic assault weapons. Thanks to NRA, the act was not renewed. This is not to say that this shooting would not have happened, but it is important to note that a less efficient gun would kill fewer people in the same amount of time.
The gun industry, powerfully lobbied for by the NRA, has brainwashed millions of Americans to believe that freedom is measured in the quantity of guns and the quality of their efficiency, and as a result, they are recklessly available on the civilian market. The NRA preys on the fears and fragile self-esteems of individuals who feel that the only path to being respected is having a tool to scare others out of offering anything but respect. In reality the NRA has divided this country in half. Those that are pro-gun reform, like me, are baffled, wondering, who are these other Americans, unmoved by the fact that their notion of “freedom” is soaked in the blood of innocent children? And with even more disgust for the lobby itself: Who are these avaricious creeps that have hijacked the meaning of freedom to defend their profits? Most importantly, with all this evil, what does freedom mean?
I am confident that an essential meaning of freedom is safety. The farther I am from an AR-15, the less I have to worry about being shot on my night out. The protection of my life is the protection of my liberty to pursue happiness. I wish I could walk by my former first grade classroom without thinking about twenty dead first graders. I wish I could go to a movie theater and not think about the Aurora, Colorado shooting. And when I am old enough to go to a nightclub, I wish not the be reminded of the massacre in Orlando. Of course, I must be careful of what I wish for, because not thinking about these things would be as harmful to the cause of gun safety as a complacent congressman, who awaits reelection instead of promoting a better society.
I began to imagine myself in the situation of a patron at the Pulse Nightclub during the shooting. My imagination showed me having a gun with which to surprise Omar when he came towards my hiding spot. But on any other night, why would I be bringing my gun to a bar? This is the reason: the option for safety that the NRA has offered is the exact option the gun industry wants as the only option, which is to buy a gun. In the current set-up, blood-soaked money continues to flow into the blood-soaked pockets of gun-industry executives.
But there is an another way. To counter this gross moral failing, it is time to pass a bill over the voices and money of the gun lobby. That bill could come in many forms, a buyback of AR-15s, a limit on the size of magazine clips available to civilians, or maybe some universal background checks, so Omar Mateen, who was already on the FBI’s terrorist watch-list, can’t buy one on the open market. Any of these bills would stop the flow of guns into the hands of people that are more likely to go on a killing rampage. Congress just needs to pick one and pass it.
I know that I am not alone; senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal of my home state of Connecticut have shown that they too take gun violence and the greed of the gun lobby personally. Hilary has pledged to stop people on the terrorist watch-list from getting guns and to close the gun-show loophole. With the help of the other 533 members of congress, many of whom are like-minded, many of whom, however, turn a blind eye to America’s suffering, I am sure that we will one day have justice, for the forty-nine lost in Orlando, the twenty-six lost in Newtown, the thirteen lost at Columbine, and the hundreds of thousands more that we have lost to gun violence since the NRA and many members of Congress became the gun-industry’s right hand. The question is this: when will complacent members of congress and the pricks that sustain them realize that in America, defending the profits of few means nothing compared to defending the lives of all?
