We Have to Save Ourselves

How much more of this can America endure? An 11-year-old girl plays dead by smearing her murdered friend’s blood on her face. A man treats himself to an AR-15 for his 18^th birthday and tells a teacher “Goodnight” before using the weapon to shoot her dead. Two little girls have to call 911 repeatedly while the 19 police officers—one for each murdered child—who are supposed to help them wait in the hallway for a janitor to bring them a key to their classroom. The obscenity of all that.

 

Who knows if anybody is coming to save us. I think we have to save ourselves. There’s a saying people invoke in a time of crisis, “Look for the helpers.” Mr. Rogers said that and while he had a lot of wisdom, that saying is still aimed at children. They’re the ones who need to look for helpers; we adults should be the helpers rather than look around for other people to rescue us.

 

Look at how many systems failed to help the schoolchildren in Uvalde and so many others. The police stood outside for crucial minutes while the parents begged them to save their kids. The part-time SWAT team was nowhere to be seen, probably off shooting another macho photo session in the desert. The politicians, particularly Senate Republicans, have consistently failed to do anything to keep kids from being killed. This is why Ted Cruz refuses to see this as a political problem—if he did see it that way, he'd have to acknowledge that as a politician, he has a responsibility to try to solve the problem. Yet he and others are happy to make this political when the gun lobby makes political contributions to them. Most of all, my generation has failed my son’s.

 

While we may not be able to help stem the tide of gun violence on our own, we can push the people who can help to do so. For my part, I’ve been emailing senators asking them to support the common-sense gun laws that have the support of the public. (Senators hear from me a lot on many issues.) They don’t respond to people from out of state, but I’m hoping some staffers will see my email and at least at it to the tally of people who are speaking out. I’m also contacting my state reps. These emails don’t take a ton of time and it’s worth a try.

 

I also still strongly believe in voting. I’ve been voting since immediately after I turned 18—in general elections, primaries, midterms and local elections—and I will never, ever stop. It’s frustrating when politicians don’t seem to be helping but the solution to that is to vote the riff-raff out and vote the competent people in. Look at the impact your vote has: If 80,000 or so people had voted a different way in a few states in 2016, the Supreme Court would be completely different, and they might not be about to overturn Roe v. Wade, or attack the right to marriage equality or contraception. If more people had voted in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, we also might have a very different country today.

 

I think there are a lot of people who refuse to participate in the system and won’t vote and I think that’s misguided. The legislative branch is not a TV show that they’ll cancel if not enough people watch it; politicians will still get elected even if you stay home. And if you stay home, you may just be opening the door to something worse—which you’ll then complain about and refuse to vote some more. I just don’t understand how anyone can look at the last decade in politics and believe the solution is less voting.

I’d also like to do more than vote and email politicians and I’m trying to figure out what that looks like for me. I can get more involved with the party at the state and local level. I thought of running for office but I’m not a leader and would be a terrible fit. I’m much more effective behind the scenes.

 

One thing I do know is if all you have to offer are cynicism and snark, you’re doing as much to solve the problem of gun violence as the people who only offer “thoughts and prayers”—nothing. You’re doing jack shit to solve anything.

 

Even if I don’t see results from the little things I’m doing, I have to try. What we do today may have effects that won’t be apparent for some time but will be real. It looks grim but there’s a flicker of hope. That flicker won’t become a fire if all I’m doing is sitting there looking at what other people are doing and saying “And nothing will change” with a cynical smirk on my face.