When I woke up now, my very first coherent considered was, “It is the 10th anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting.”
Then I recognized why a trivial 10-calendar year live performance anniversary, of all matters, broke via my thirty day period-prolonged blogger’s block yesterday. The thought of a 10th anniversary experienced been on my head given that I attended the Nationwide Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence in D.C. previous Wednesday. The once-a-year vigil is arranged by a coalition of anti-gun-violence businesses, which include the Newtown Action Alliance, a grassroots team launched by Newtown, Conn., citizens just after the capturing at the town’s Sandy Hook Elementary College, the place 20 youngsters and six educators ended up murdered. The vigil is constantly on or close to December 14, the day of that tragedy.
I attended the D.C. vigil as a part of Gays In opposition to Guns (you never have to be homosexual to sign up for!), a direct action group that places tension on individuals who support and allow the gun sector. I was one of GAG’s “Human Beings” — folks dressed in white, including veils, every silently keeping room for a distinct particular person whose everyday living was shed to gun violence. GAG was founded right after the 2016 mass capturing at the Pulse, an LGBTQ+ club in Orlando, Fla., and the Human Beings ended up the idea of founding member James “Tigger” Ferguson, who wanted to make the lives misplaced tangible to the community in a way a record of names in a news report just can’t. I can testify that it is very effective, no matter if Human Beings are walking via Situations Sq. (representing the Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket capturing victims) holding space in front of the landmark Stonewall Inn (representing the Club Q capturing victims) or standing in St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill as we did previous Wednesday (symbolizing dozens of individuals killed in homophobic/transphobic attacks).
When we’re in public, individuals want to know what we’re about. The Human Beings really do not communicate, but GAG users and other activists make clear why we are there, what we want (a ban on assault rifles, for occasion), and invite observers to walk among the Human Beings and examine about the persons whose life were being shed, all unnecessarily.
Gun violence has only gotten even worse considering the fact that Sandy Hook. In 2020, for the initially time, guns surpassed car accidents, drug overdoses, and cancer as the leading cause of loss of life for small children, aged 1 to 19 decades old. On a particular amount, this May’s elementary university capturing place me about the edge. I’m chatting about the a person at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, throughout which the very well-funded and amply-experienced regional law enforcement stood around for additional than an hour as youngsters and teachers were shot. Oddly, the very last straw for me was Fled Cruz (I refuse to use any other name for that joke of a Texas senator) claimed the response to university shootings like Uvalde wasn’t fewer guns, but one particular-door faculty structures.
I pretty much felt like I could not reside a state in which a Zodiac-Killer-looking ignoramus like Fled could say a thing that ignorant. I begun preparing an escape. MrB is retired and I can do the job from anyplace, so in September, we packed up Edward the pet and our two cats and went to Montreal. We beloved it! I even identified TWO pole-dancing studios in going for walks length and started out to persuade myself I could understand to like the cold. But, morally, I couldn’t nonetheless abandon the struggle in this article, so we returned to New York in time for me to get out the vote for the November 8 midterms by knocking on voters’ doors in Pennsylvania.
Ahead of we took our break from gun tradition, lots of individuals, including my Canadian buddies, pointed out some issues I’m hyper-conscious of: that violent fascism is on the uptick globally, and Canada has its have awful record and brutal existing-working day racism. I really don’t feel for a second there’s any place immune from the evils perpetrated by humanity. But the U.S. is special in a awful way due to the fact no other wealthy region has permitted an epidemic of guns like we have …
… and no other rich region has close to the selection of gun homicides that the U.S. does.
Also, the Centers for Disorder Manage and Avoidance has described a surge in firearm suicides: In 2021, the 26,320 firearm-associated suicides actually outnumbered the 20,966 homicides prompted by guns. (For 2022, the depend will unfortunately consist of 40-year-outdated Stephen “tWitch” Boss, the well-known dancer and “Ellen” show DJ, whose demise by a self-inflicted gunshot was declared right now.)
There was a small bit of very good news this 12 months. Both of those Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi spoke at the vigil in D.C. very last 7 days …
… and reminded us that in June, President Biden signed into regulation the very first main gun security laws passed by Congress in 28 decades. Amid other points, a regulation restricting gun possession by domestic abusers now addresses people who are courting, not just married or formerly married. Sad to say, the legislation did not reinstate the 1994 law banning assault-design weapons, so the AR-15s favored by domestic terrorists out to trigger maximum carnage continue to be unrestricted.
I do consider that a tiny development is much better than a stalemate, but as always, I’m getting ready for all options. On the just one hand, MrB and I are continuing our Québécois lessons by Zoom. On the other hand, I last but not least obtained a white winter season jacket for my Human Becoming responsibilities. From time to time we stay outdoors for an hour, standing inventory however. It pains me to assume that I’ll use the jacket prolonged just before I have an opportunity to get un café noir. Which is America for you.
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