Timidity

For all our bravado as a nation, we've been timid about standing up on a local level. Problems seem to large. The country itself seems to big. DC is too far away. We're afraid of repercussions, from being blanked by the other parents at school to being shot by a lunatic for voicing our minds.

I felt this keenly when I moved from Britain back to the US, and voiced my disapproval about the Iraq war at its beginning. People told me to 'go back where you came from' if I though our nation was wrong. Even though I'd originally come from Seattle.

Every time there's violence in my community, I feel cowed. That if I speak up against guns, some NRA nutjob will leave poop - or worse - in my mailbox. Yet how will we stop our children dying in school, on their own porches, in their own homes from guns?

I remember Britain after Dunblane, the terrible Scottish tragedy when a lonely, backwards little man gunned down a school in his home town. I felt amazed as I watched the British Parliament swing into action to ban handguns, rifles and shotguns once and for all.

They held gun amnesties across the nation. People brought Uncle Fred's service revolver down from the attic, and into the police stations. They collected piles and piles of guns - even a few ancient muskets that would kill the next person who tried to fire them.

Why can't we do this? Our kids die each year. If we can try to get a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage - which hurts no one and helps a bunch of people - why can't we ban guns? Is there really a justification for bearing arms now that its historical context is gone?

Guns do one thing. Kill. And it's totally within our power as a society to stop gun violence.

Technorati Tags:gun amnesty, guns, dunblane
Generated By Technorati Tag Generator