Thoughts on Recent Mass Shootings

The last few days I’ve been in a bit of a fog. I’m disgusted with people. People who can do terrible things in this world with a smile on their face. Mass shootings in America are at an all-time high and my faith in humanity has been impaired.

 

Gilroy Garlic Festival. Too close to home.

(It’s always too close to someone’s home)

Last Sunday my daughters asked me if we could go do something fun on our way home from an event and I immediately thought, absolutely, you two deserve to do something fun outside. They’d been cooped up so long at an “adult event”.  Gilroy is the next town over from where we live. The Garlic Festival was wrapping up. The last few hours you get in for free, don’t have to park far away and take a shuttle, all that good stuff. We could go for a little bit. Get their faces painted or jump in a bounce house.

They fell asleep.

I kept driving.

We got lucky.

I can’t help but feel like someone was watching over us when my sister-in-law texted to make sure we weren’t at the event. Forty minutes after we drove by the exit on Highway 101 to the Gilroy Garlic Festival, a shooter unleashed an automatic assault rifle killing 3 innocent people, 2 of them young children, and injuring 12 others.

When I close my eyes I can’t help but imagine that child being my own, jumping happily in a bounce house and then… you know the rest.

Not everyone was as lucky as we were on Sunday evening.

I went to high school with one of the victims in the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting. She and her husband are both recovering from bullet wounds. Luckily they survived. I’m sure they will be recovering for a lifetime from this traumatic event.

I have a platform to share my voice and thought it only right I use it to share their story. You can read about their horrifying experience on their Go Fund Me page.

“It won’t happen to us.”

People, myself included, often think something terrible like a mass shooting will never happen in their home town, to them, to people they know.  But in reality, it is becoming much too common.

Gilroy wasn’t even the worst of it…

Sunday, the Gilroy Garlic Festival, Gilroy, California. 3 killed, 12 injured. 

Saturday, a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. 22 lives lost. Over 24 injured. 

Sunday, Dayton, Ohio. 9 lost their lives. At least 27 injured. 

Unfortunately, if things keep on going the way they have, there are very likely more mass shootings to come.

We need change in gun laws NOW.

 

Why is the United States the only country with a Mass Shooting problem? We are supposed to be lucky to live in America. But right now I’m not feeling like it is a good thing.

When is this nonsense going to stop? When will we as a country do something to stop gun violence?

 

I want to make a difference. And as much as I want to run, move out of this country, to someplace where I don’t have to worry if my children will come home from school… or worry that there could be a shooter in any crowd of people… I know that won’t solve our country’s problems. The bottom line is this needs to stop.

Blame gun control laws, mental health, our president…blame won’t help.

If you want to help make a change in Gun Safety, please check out these pages for actions that can make a difference:

Everytown for Gun Safety 

Moms Demand Action 

 

 

We can make a change. Each and every one of us.

 

Want More? Please read 18 School Shootings in 2018