I’m a proud Papa

We always imagine, once we become parents, that our children will grow up to embody the principles that we hold dear to.  Rarely is it, nowadays, that children meet our expectations, let alone surpass them.

Today I watched my daughter take part in a protest in which she and 32 others placed themselves in a position where they could have been arrested.  Why?  For the issue of banning the sale of assault weapons.

The march and protest which concluded outside the offices of Senator Pat Toomey in Philadelphia today was a planned event.  It began at 4th and Race Streets where an actual assault rifle was melted down, turned into a farming implement.  That farm tool was then marched down to Mr. Toomey’s office, with about three hundred protesters in tow, myself included.

My daughter Jessica had trained for this.  Prepared for her possible arrest.  How can I, as a parent, ever be any prouder?

The issue hardly seems arguable anymore.  People intent on violence, those with or without mental health issues, choose assault weapons for one reason.  And it is not self-defense.  It is to kill as many people as they can in as short a time as they can.  That’s it.

How this can even still be an issue after Sandy Hook is outrageous.  The autopsy photos of each of those dead children should be mailed to every resident of this country.  Politicians should be forced to have them framed and hanging in their offices.  Because only then would they be forced to address the issue and stop running and hiding from it.

People hear it and think it is rhetoric.  But it’s true.  The gun lobby controls this country through the politicians.  Politicians like Toomey who spout their faith in God.  A God he obviously does not believe in.  How could he?  How could he and still fail to act with just the merest of human compassion?  Hanging his hat on the Second Amendment?  Seriously?

The mass shootings happen.  Everyone speaks of it.  The news carries the story.  The flags fly.  The politicians give their bullshit speeches.  And nothing changes.  Nothing.

Assault weapons are weapons of war.  They are not weapons of self-defense.  Groups like those fighting today aren’t trying to take away people’s guns.  That’s what most people don’t understand.  They’re trying to remove weapons of war from the hands of people who have no business ever holding them.

I’ve never been touched by gun violence, whether it be of the assault weapon nature or otherwise.  Yet there I was today, marching and shouting.  For an issue so simple and logical it defies logic that nothing significant has been done.

I’ve written before, I am not a religious man.  I am a man of right and wrong.  You don’t need a God to explain that to you.  But I secretly hope this is a God, and an afterlife.  And that there is a very special place there not just for the people who purchase guns and then kill, but for those people like Pat Toomey, who had a chance to step up and do something to protect many people, yet did nothing.

Fortunately, my daughter is sleeping in her own bed tonight.  Her and the 32 others that were willing to spend the night in a much more unsavory place.  So that no parent has to ever again get the call not to come to pick their child up at school, but at the morgue.  Yeah, I know, serious shit.  Makes you want to stop reading.  Or turn the page.  That’s what we do.  We stop reading.  We stop looking.  Too dark.  That is what the gun lobby and the politicians count on.  Our ignorance.

In World War II the Germans didn’t worry about the United State’s entry into the war.  They claimed Americans were too weak.  That we didn’t have the stomach for it.  Our own politicians now think the VERY SAME THING OF US.  They underestimate us.

Hey, Pat, don’t underestimate my daughter.  And her associates.  They are in this for the long run.  Trying to save our children…whether you want them to or not.