Sensible gun laws now!
I’ll be wearing Orange on June 3rd to show my support for reasonable gun laws. Like most Americans, I’m sick and saddened by the loss of life due to mass shootings by mainly young men with military style weapons and handguns.
My experience with gun violence is personal and occurred July 13, 1985 one month after my high school graduation from Bend Senior High. The victim, was my boyfriend who attended our cross town rival high school Mountain View. It happened at a party on Bend’s west side. My boyfriend, Chris Booker was 18 years old.
At that time, gun violence was in the news, but it was kids in the city, kids in gangs, violence we couldn’t conceive in small town Bend, OR. We hadn’t yet seen school shootings and daily mass killings. My life changed after Chris was murdered, but I moved forward.
On Thursday last week, after Uvalde, I took a mind clearing trail run. I chose an area where I hoped to not encounter many people. My run took me to Big Eddy. It’s changed a bit there, and in my music filled, one foot in front of the other slog, I almost didn’t recognize where I was. The trails are wider, there are handrails, less water, and a pit toilet. I realized that I was at the spot where Chris Booker and I had met during high school at a kegger in the woods.
When I raised my two children, I never had any tolerance for gun aggression. Toy guns, fake shoot outs, and violent video games were not allowed. Any one with a young son knows what an uphill battle this is. Ten years ago, after the Newtown school shooting when my son was 12, we went to a family bbq for the baseball team. It was at a beautiful Bend home, in a gated community. The weather was bad. It was cold and everyone was inside. The parents gathered in the kitchen to discuss the horrors of the shooting and the group of boys snuck past us to a back room to play violent, active shooter, video games. I was horrified and dumb founded that no one made the connection I did.
Young boys, endlessly playing games, where they kill people.
I have a wide array of friends and family who support the second amendment and the right to have guns on themselves, in their car, in their purse and by their bed. Who are they protecting? Are they prepared to use these guns? In too many instances these self defense weapons fall into the hands of children and young men who die from either accident or suicide. As I write this, I hear lyrics in my head from one of the Chicks latest songs...
”oh cut the shit, you ain’t goin’ to the gun range.”
I grew up with guns in the house. I grew up with guns in the gun rack in the car I drove to school. I received a gun for my 12th birthday. Less that 12 months ago, I hunted and killed a cow elk. But with my gun came classes, gun safety courses, an NRA membership, and respect for guns. Guns had a safe spot and a purpose. I don’t believe all guns should be outlawed or confiscated. I want hand guns to be difficult to obtain and military style weapons to be banned. Think of it as a ban on late term abortions and a waiting period before a huge decision is made. This is reasonable right?
When my son was 18, his dad moved out. Without a word he got a used TV, and bought a game console and the controllers he needed to play shooting video games alone and virtually with friends. I’ll admit, that I was often thankful that he was home safe in his room and not driving to a kegger in the woods.
Over the past 37 years, I’ve watched the news and my heart aches for the mothers of the victims. I’ve struggled with my own words, my anger, and my lack of action. As I entered into adulthood and motherhood I have watched as the NRA defended military style weapons and blocked meaningful, reasonable laws. I thought the NRA were the good guys that supported hunters safety? I’ve watched as parents, my peers, park their young boys in front of game consoles and ignore the violence in the games they play and the lyrics in the music they listen to. Add a diet filled with sugar and crap, a lack of sleep, poor male role models and leaders in America more concerned about gun lobbies and big money and just like that....
We have a Public Health Crisis.
I feel guilty that I can’t find my place in the fight for gun control laws. I tried to attend a recent meeting of Moms Demand. It was on my calendar. I was going... but then I got a call telling me that masks were required. This was weeks after all mask mandates were lifted. Those are not the people I can align with either.
I’m looking for the radical center! The pissed off hunters, the moms that do care about what fills their kids brains. The people who say "we’ve got laws to protect us from everything, why not guns?” I will wear Orange on Friday and I hope the people diligently fighting for the right of unborn children will wear Orange too. If you are for children and babies, the fight for sensible gun control laws should be your fight too!
I’m wearing Orange. I’m telling my story, and I vote. I think that’s all I can do.
