Things We Can Do to Stop The Shootings!

The time for debate on whether or not we should put controls on guns is over. The debate is moot. The question is rather, how do we stop the shootings? What do we do to end the blood bath of gun violence that is raging out of control? The problem seems large and overwhelming, especially when we are painfully aware that wealthy and powerful forces are enjoying, benefiting, and supporting the carnage.

We must take action. Talk is not enough. Debating your neighbors will change nothing. We (you and me) must DO something! The purpose of this blog entry to provide two simple and clear things we can do: write legislators and give money to organizations working to end gun violence.

Write or call your legislators. 

Common Cause has a page that will list all of your elected officials. Click here and enter your address and you will get a list of your federal and state legislators and their contact information.

Here is the email I sent. Feel free to use it or make it your own:

Subject: What are you doing to stop the shootings?

Dear Lawmaker,

What are you doing to stop the shootings and end gun violence? It is painfully clear that whatever measures are in place, they are inadequate. Both mass shootings like the recent events in Roseburg, Charleston, Washington DC, Newtown, Aurora, Fort Hood, and shootings in urban areas are all the more tragic because of our failure to prevent them. The debate is over. No sensible person can argue that more guns can solve this problem.

I am asking you to do two things:

1. Pass legislation this year to regulate the sale, distribution, and use of guns and end these shootings. Like so many other products that have caused safety issues, guns users should be required to have a license, training, and be liable if weapons that they purchased are used for murder.
2. Begin a process to address the problems with the second amendment that have put us in this terrible place. Whether it is another amendment or another solution, there must be a longer and more far-reaching solution that will end both this debate and the killings.

The way we will know these laws are effective will be when there are no more shootings. Other countries have solved this problem; we must do so as well.

I implore you to bring legislation to a vote this year,

Yours truly,

David A. Hirsch

Next, support organizations that are working to end gun violence. Those who oppose common sense gun regulation are very wealthy. We must chip in to create a voice that can be heard over the moneyed loonies who fund the opposition to sensible gun laws.

In researching organizations, I found that the Brady Campaign was an excellent organization. Click here and make a donation!

Other organizations you could explore are:

The Coalition Against Gun Violence

The Illinois Council on Handgun Violence

Parents Against Gun Violence

Gabby Gifford’s organization: Americans for Responsible Solutions

If you want more information, here are three articles, one from the New Yorker, a second from the New York Times and a third from the Boston University of Public Health which may help to put the issue in context.

While guns are unregulated, no one is safe. If children in an elementary school, audiences in movie theaters, and military personnel at an army base can be victims, we are all at risk. Let’s act to prevent anyone else from being senselessly killed.

One more thing: please keep this issue on your mind as you vote in November.

A Family Refrigerator Album

Our fridge has been making clear signs that the end is near. We figured out that, if we didn’t move quickly, we would have to repent. So today, we purchased a new one. This evening, we began the process of getting ready. The first thing: take everything off the fridge.

It was a wonderful and odd trip into the past. The fridge is the center of the kitchen, and as such, holds such critical items as school directories, the grocery list, invitations and event flyers, of most importance to my son and wife, sports schedules.

However, there was a great deal more!

No pictures of our children have been added to the fridge in a long time. Although he hasn’t picked up a violin in years, there is a snapshot of our son at a music competition playing in a science room next to a safety hood and a big red box that reads, “FIRE BLANKET”. Above it, in a Sunday School made Hanukkah frame, he is a smiling next to an electric menorah. A magnet version of his head is there, too. It was on his locker in elementary school! A wallet size picture of our daughter from first grade was in a dusty and furry Elmo frame. The same pigtailed photo was also in a frame made of popsicle sticks. Her baby picture was in a school themed frame holding an old newsletter clipping titled “July Checklist”.

There are a dozen different colored magnets from the Society for Humanistic Judaism. Rectangular magnets from pizza places, restaurants, schools, camps, businesses, and of course, the library and the fire department dotted the fridge. A teddy bear magnet had names of doctors we haven’t seen in years. There are five wedding “save the date” magnets, including one for a wedding that never happened. A paw printed magnet says, “Got poop?” There are magnets for the Friends of the Arts and the Deerfield Parent Network. Two small red magnets say “CAUTION” and “risk”. Two magnets say, “PREPAREDNESS STARTS WITH YOU”!

A large magnet has a picture of two beavers and reads “Hugs and Kisses from Arizona!” There is a red phone booth, a black cab, a turtle, a baguette in a bag, a bottle of white wine, a pig in a tutu and a drawing of a weight lifter. There is a pineapple and three magnets from a hotel in Hawaii. A photo of a friend in a fur coat has a talk bubble above her head that reads, “What do you mean I’m dramatic?”

A big magnet proclaims, “New Trier Alumni” (my alma matter) and another has the eagle symbol of the University of Iowa (although none of us attended that college nor does it seem any of us will). There are nine square magnets all of which say, “TAPE SIDE” There is a magnet the shape of a van, another the shape of a stop sign, a magnet version of the movie poster from What Dreams May Come, and a tiny box of Minute Rice.

Next to a mirror, and inside a red plastic container from a locker is an Obama 2012 button. A white plastic note holder with the Deerfield Warrior head was a homecoming giveaway. A frame with our daughter’s name on it was the place card for a family bat mitzvah.

Some words to remember were on the fridge, too. The lyrics from “This is the Day” from one of the children’s mitzvah service, a clipped section from a High Holiday long ago, and at least a dozen fortunes from fortune cookies sticking out from a red star. The National Holocaust museum sent us a magnet with the famous quotation from Martin Niemoller.

It took nineteen years to accumulate all this stuff on the fridge. It took about fifteen minutes to take it all off. Some of it will find its way back on the new fridge, but it will not be the same. It will begin a new era. We will have new schools, universities and grad schools. We will have pictures of children in their late teens and early twenties. There will be new words and mementos of more recent travels.

Some things can keep, some keep for a long time, but everything has a shelf life. Time to start again.