Hazel!!! I have missed you!!! I didn’t even know this comment was here until just now! Everyone usually leaves comments on the facebook page! I am so thrilled to see this from you–and, as usual, it’s brilliant.
This part… ” that we’ve become ridiculous in our defense of weapons which are only used to kill people…”
I think you’re right about kids looking to us to come to our “senses” and make change. How embarrassing that we can’t make this better for them and for the teachers who are already doing what they can to help us raise happy and prepared kids.
It’s all so scary and so sad. There is going to be a day when my kids read this and say “I can’t believe people were ALLOWED to have semi automatic weapons and rifles in our country! How messed up is that??”
Because it truly is pretty freakin’ messed up.
So happy to see you here. You don’t even know!!!!!
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO R

The NRA has a concerning amount of influence, to be sure. My husband is training to be a Rangemaster for the Boy Scouts. The NRA training for this offers prospective trainees the option of paying for a membership and thus, being able to ‘skip’ the next year’s certification training. To me, this is absurd. We would be furious if a teacher could just pay a fee to skip their continuing education requirement–isn’t that the exact same thing, but worse? My husband is working to find another agency to conduct the Rangemaster training for our local scouts groups here, and if unsuccessful, will go to the annual trainings required. We own guns, but he refuses to join the NRA. We want to know how they came up with the idea that paying for a membership somehow exempts you from the same training any other person would be expected to complete. To me, this shows that the NRA is careless and being reckless in promotion of their own brand.

We keep our kids safe in the good, common sense ways as we can (responsible gun owners will lock their weapons, keep them locked away, render them inaccessible to children) and hope that the legislature in Washington DC will see that the time is now. Thank you for taking a moment to share your thoughts– so many of us share them– that we’ve become ridiculous in our defense of weapons which are only used to kill people. Our children are crying out for the adults in charge to come to their senses…. we, their parents, should take up that cause in their honor. Before another child dies needlessly, before another teacher has to wrestle with the horror and regret of not being able to do enough in a hopeless situation… before we have to see this same rerun of senseless violence on the TV news, again.