COMMENTARY: What Kind of Nation Have We Become When We Fail to Protect Our Children?

COMMENTARY: What Kind of Nation Have We Become When We Fail to Protect Our Children?

In the wake of yet another mass slaughter of innocent Americans, I am writing to implore my colleagues in both the Congress and our state legislatures to go to CNN’s website and listen carefully to the words of a young American named Cameron Kasky. You can find his declaration of principle and truth on CNN.com.

This 17-year-old student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, is demonstrating more courage, moral clarity and determination about the danger of unregulated guns in America (and, especially, the danger to us all of high-powered, military grade, semi-automatic weapons) than are many of the women and men with whom I serve.

As most Americans now know, on February 14 (Valentine’s Day), Cameron Kasky, his brother, Holden, and all of the students and teachers at their Parkland, FL, high school were forced to fear for their lives.  A deranged person had picked up a lawfully purchased AR-15, took it to the school, and methodically murdered 17 people, injuring another 14.

We also know that, in the era after the Columbine massacre of 1999 (13 dead and 24 injured), mass slaughters with semi-automatic weapons have become a harsh, terrifying and unacceptable reality of American life.

Just as we must redouble our efforts to reduce the violence in places like Chicago and Baltimore, we cannot – and we must not – forget the sense of loss and personal devastation that we felt after Virginia Tech (32 dead).  We cannot brush aside the primitive brutality of Binghamton, NY (14 dead), or Aurora, CO (12 dead), or Sandy Hook (the lives of 27 children and teachers methodically destroyed).

We must act.  Our national conscience and sense of security and self-worth cannot withstand any more breaking headlines – any more mass killings in San Bernadino, CA (14 killed), Orlando, FL (49 massacred),  Las Vegas, NV (58 killed and 546 injured), or Texas (26 killed).

Now, if you think that this partial listing of the butcher’s bill from our failure to adequately regulate semi-automatic weapons of war is incomplete, you are correct.  There is insufficient room in this newspaper to adequately remember all of the casualties from the gun violence that our nation has endured.

What should be heartening to us, however, is the determination and clarity that Cameron Kasky and young people across America are expressing in their challenge to their elected representatives, their governors and the President of the United States.

“At the end of the day,” Cameron observed in his CNN interview, “the students at my school felt one shared experience – our politicians abandoned us by failing to keep guns out of schools….”

“Our community just took 17 bullets to the heart,” he continued, “and it feels like the only people who don’t care are the people who are making the laws.”

I must agree.

There is no period of silence, no equivocating delay, no overreaching argument about the constitutional sanctity of our Second Amendment that is adequate to counterman a simple, compelling and unavoidable truth.

Cameron Kasky is speaking truth to power when he declares that, as a nation, we are failing to protect our people from this carnage.  Most unforgivable of all, we are failing to protect the lives of our school children.

Every last elected official in America, and every last citizen who voted for us (or failed to vote at all), bears a measure of responsibility for this failure and its bloody toll on human lives.  Yet, as Cameron Kasky also acknowledges, we are not all equally culpable.

“The truth,” he observed, “is that the politicians on both sides of the aisle are to blame. The Republicans, generally speaking, take large donations from the NRA and are therefore beholden to their cruel agenda. And the Democrats lack the organization and the votes to do anything about it.”

We, who have been elected to serve and protect our Constitution and the American People, can only stand before this challenge, acknowledge our failures and seek to reclaim our honor.

As a first honest step, we can acknowledge that before the federal assault weapons ban expired, it did not stop all killings, but it did significantly reduce the carnage.  We who serve in the Congress have the power, right now, to renew those protections.

The proposed Assault Weapons Ban of 2018 [H.R. 5087], sponsored by my colleague, Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, now has more than 173 co-sponsors.  Senator Diane Feinstein’s companion bill [S.2095] has 29.  I, along with all of Maryland’s Democratic Delegation, am fighting for its passage.

However, in proof of Cameron Kasky’s indictment, there are no Republicans in support of these modest, protective measures, only a few Republicans support strengthened background checks, and a Republican House and Senate leadership, beholden to the NRA, is denying us the ability to even have a floor debate and up-or-down vote.

Nevertheless, I am cautiously optimistic that the will of the American People will prevail.  A recent Quinnipiac opinion poll found that 67 percent of Americans (including 43 percent of Republicans) now favor an assault weapons ban.  Even more encouraging, the young people of our nation (along with many of us who are older) are mobilizing.

This growing movement for greater safety, security and sanity in our national discussion about guns – this March for Our Lives – will be bringing upwards of 500,000 Americans to Washington, DC, on March 24th – with companion marches across the nation, including here in Baltimore.  For more information, go to https://marchforourlives.com/ on your Web browser.

Even if you can’t march on the 24th, please remember this.  Our Constitution (including its Second Amendment) was not designed to be a collective suicide pact.  It was designed to protect the safety, as well as the liberty, of the American People.

Above all else, and whatever political obstacles may be placed in our path, we must protect our nation’s children.  Our sacred oaths and honor demand that – and more.

Congressman Elijah Cummings represents Maryland’s 7th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.

The post What Kind of Nation Have We Become When We Fail to Protect Our Children? appeared first on Afro.

OPINION: Maybe children will lead us this time

OPINION: Maybe children will lead us this time

Dear Editor:

In Bob Marley’s iconic anthem of conscience, “Redemption Song,” he asked, “How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?”

Florida now joins that ugly tragic club of states that have seen their children sacrificed to the false god of gun obsession. Too many are hiding behind the Second Amendment and refusing to come to some common sense solutions that would at least make it harder for crazy people to kill us.

Now the students are getting tired of watching the grown people do little to protect them and are planning a march on Washington March 24. As students are confronting terror, our president is blaming the FBI and everything but the fact that military weapons bought legally are mowing down people in the church, in movie theaters and in our schools.

Days after the public execution of President John F. Kennedy, a solemn Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. spoke words that ring true still today:

Our late President was assassinated by a morally inclement climate. It is a climate filled with heavy torrents of false accusation, jostling winds of hatred, and raging storms of violence.

It is a climate where men cannot disagree without being disagreeable, and where they express dissent through violence and murder. It is the same climate that murdered Medgar Evers in Mississippi and six innocent Negro children in Birmingham, Ala.

So in a sense, we are all participants in that horrible act that tarnished the image of our nation. By our silence, by our willingness to compromise principle, by our constant attempt to cure the cancer of racial injustice with the Vaseline of gradualism, by our readiness to allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at whim, by allowing our movie and television screens to teach our children that the hero is one who masters the art of shooting and the technique of killing, by allowing all these developments, we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes. – Martin L. King Jr. 1963

King also said that we lived in a “10-day country” where the anger and passion will give way to business as usual. President Obama lamented after yet another mass murder that our responses have become “too routine.”

The question is do we care to do anything other than pray and feel sorry about this? I don’t think the people losing loved ones are so nonchalant. Maybe this time the Florida school children will do what no one else has been able to…demand that politicians do something about mental health and weapons of mass murders.

The student’s march on Washington will not be about liberal and conservative; it will not be about red Republican or blue Democrats and it will not be about race. This march is in fact about how easy it is to obtain guns more lethal than what was used in Vietnam. These weapons are not aimed at terrorist or the Viet Cong, but at unarmed men, women and children running for their lives while others hide behind worn out excuses.

The murderers who slaughtered in Las Vegas, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Orlando and now Parkland, obtained these weapons legally. Not pistols or shotguns to protect their homes but military-style weapons to spread horror.

Spare me that crap about if you take guns away only criminals will have them! You think that there are no criminals in Japan or Germany? Is there no mentally unstable in Canada or Australia? Of course, there are!

What is different is that it is much harder to get an assault weapon in those countries! Do not blame diversity either because Britain and France have multicultural societies but not as many mass murders as we have. Even in this country, there are fewer murders in states that have stricter gun control.

No one is asking America to give up her guns and have no means of protection. That is the bold-faced lie the gun people yell out to keep from having a sane conversation about common sense machine gun control.

The NRA will tell you that the problem is that we have enough laws and all that is needed is to enforce the ones we have. Alright well, what is the NRA doing about that? They are pretty good about lining the pockets of mostly Republican politicians who in return go nowhere near any real gun control, even though the majority of the American public says it wants something done!

Yes, even gun owners say they would like stricter background checks and fewer assault weapons on the streets but Republicans conveniently ignore those wishes in favor of money from the NRA.

Where was the NRA when Philando Castile was killed after telling the policeman he had a legally registered gun and what Republican stood up for the Marissa Alexander who went to jail for firing a warning shot under the Stand Your Ground law? Both just happened to be black and frankly, race is a fuel that drives many of the gun nuts.

The Second Amendment was made when there were no police and no machine guns. It also talks about a well-regulated Militia, which to me suggest that people be well trained to use their guns. No one wants to stop people from protecting their family but you don’t need weapons made for warfare.

Donald Trump attempted to deflect attention from his “Putin love” by suggesting that the FBI could have done more to prevent the Florida murders as if there were not enough agents to investigate Russian attacks on our democracy and domestic threats. He talks about mental health instead of his NRA masters as being the problem while he tries to take money away from health care.

What good is a wall when children cannot feel safe in school or grandma cannot go to church? He is not the first president to endure mass murders but when was the last time you heard President Obama or even President Bush being accused by teenagers for using their classmate’s death for his own personal benefit?

Dr. King was once asked why he risked his life and spent so much time away from his own families. He looked around and said, “For the children.”

Now there is another march planned in Washington by children not for civil rights but for their lives. I hope that the spirit of Dr. King will be there with them.

– Rivers-Cleveland