MountainMornings

“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?”

But I don’t want to know his name
Or that he wore combat armour
That he lived with his mother
Or they seemed like a normal family

I don’t want to know the number
The size or make of the guns
Or that there will be 20 brighter
Stars in heaven this Christmas

I don’t want to know “Why”
What motivated a man to
Wake up one morning and
Cowardly mow down children

Because it doesn’t matter
All that doesn’t begin to explain
The unexplainable or to stem
The tide of grief and anguish
Still to come in this nightmare

What matters is that we
Wake Up
And take a collective sigh
And make gun violence a priority

“And if I am only for myself, then what am I?”
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/immediately-address-issue-gun-control-through-introduction-legislation-congress/2tgcXzQC
“The signatures on this petition represent a collective demand for a bipartisan discussion resulting in a set of laws that regulates how a citizen obtains a gun.”

Our society will always have mentally ill people; they will go to a classroom at VA Tech or Columbine High School, they will walk into a shopping mall or a movie theatre. They will get into a taxi, then stroll into a parking lot and shoot a congresswoman. I must be crazy to think that the overwhelming factor in this national carnage isn’t the shooter – so let’s lock all our doors and live in fear, and btw let’s arm ourselves?

NO, the problem is GUNS…the abundance of guns in our country and their easy access. The United States loses 87 people a day to gun violence. Yesterday we lost 27 people in a small New England town, including the shooter and his mother. Let’s not play the blame game, and ask how he got into the school, or if somebody heard his threats. Without those guns in his hands, he would have injured his mother, with a knife or a heavy object or his own hands, and maybe, just maybe that would have been all? We place second in the world to gun ownership per citizen, next to Yemen.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/20/gun-violence.html

“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?” Rabbi Hillel