There are no words that can truly express my feelings about Friday’s school shooting in Newtown, CT. But I feel like I have to write them down, to get it out. To try to piece this together. To try to find a way to clear my head of the images, the stories. There are a million thoughts about this tragedy that have been swirling through my head since it happened. I feel an overall sadness about the state of the world we live in, and constantly on the brink of tears. Sickened, saddened, irate, these are all words that come to mind to descibe how I feel. . I just cannot wrap my brain around the purely evil act of murdering innocent small children. 20 of them. Of course the 8 adults as well, and my heart goes out to their loved ones too. But I cannot look at the photos in the news of these smiling babies, age 6 and 7, who had their whole lives ahead of them, without thinking of my own daughter. I don’t know how one goes on after losing a child so violently, so senselessly. I really don’t. What I’m really having a hard time with is the fact that the murderer, who was clearly mentally ill, had access to multiple assault weapons to carry out this massacre. Not a hunting rifle not a single handgun. Multiple assault weapons that have no business being in a family home, much less in the hands of a mentally ill person. I’ve bit my tongue when a co-worker said “crazy people will always fild a way to kill people if they are set on it”, and when I have heard the same old talk all weekend about our constitutional rights to bear arms, but I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone who is a parent would not be for some sort of gun control. This tragedy has got to be the tipping point. Doesn’t it? If not this, then what? What will it take to ban the availabilty of assault weapons to civilians? I pray that 2013 brings us some sort of reform on this subject, for the sake of our children. For now, I continue to try to make this Christmas season as special and magical as I possibly can, for my sweet baby girl. I want all of her days to be filled with wonder, magic, laughter, and love. But I know the day will come when she will be old enough to know about these atrocities, and that makes me sad. Until then, I will wrap my arms around her and protect her to the best that I can, tell her I love her more than she knows, and pray that there will be a better way soon.
Well said Stacy.
Hey girly, I nominated you for the Liebster Award. Check out my blog fo the deets. I know you don’t blog much anymore, but I love your posts when you do!