A Call for Gun Control from Connecticut

99 days. That’s how long it’s been since the Newtown massacre.  We know the gruesome numbers: twenty young children and seven teachers dead at the hands of a mentally ill killer and his Bushmaster .223 assault rifle. Since that fateful day, approximately 2,900 more people have died from gun violence in the United States, and hundreds of mentally ill Americans have been arrested and thrown in jail rather than rehabilitated in mental hospitals. However, for the residents of Newtown and people across Connecticut, the most chilling statistic of all may be the number of laws to combat this violence that the federal government has passed since the Newtown tragedy: zero.

Flash back to December 14, 2012. When I first heard about the Newtown tragedy, I couldn’t sleep—not that night or for the next few. In retrospect, the shootings shouldn’t have surprised me too much. In America, a heartbreaking mass outbreak of gun violence seems to occur in a small town a few times a year or so. And, though similar feelings of outrage and devastation had hit me, it had been much easier for me to forget about the gun massacres that had occurred in Aurora, or Fort Hood, or Blacksburg.

The Newtown incident was tougher to shake. It didn’t happen in some obscure town thousands of miles away. It happened in my home state, in a town fewer than 50 miles from the house where I was born and raised. I drove home for winter break a few days after the shooting. When I arrived, my Mom hugged me closer than ever before, and for the first time in years I saw my 6’ 5” father tear up.

I tried to act normally and go about my ordinary business: enjoying the long break and the time with my family. Sadly, this proved to be an impossible task. Newtown was constantly at the forefront of my mind. I soon learned I wasn’t alone. The effect rippling through all of Connecticut’s communities was clear. Conversations with neighbors, family and friends all began to take on the same general tone of anxiety. Several mothers told me that their peace of mind about their kids’ safety had been forever shattered; they would “never truly feel safe again,” I heard them say.  They were distraught, saddened and afraid. We all were.

But regardless of how any particular conversation started, they all ended the same way. Without hesitation, nearly every person I talked to agreed on one simple thing: we, as a nation, needed to do something about this now.

And for a while, we were all confident that we would. I shared with friends, family and neighbors across the state of Connecticut the genuine yet ultimately naïve hope that a tragedy of this magnitude would spur our legislators in Washington to rise above the partisan gridlock and petty party loyalty to come together and act on our behalf.

We couldn’t have been more wrong. Somehow, despite the atrocity that was the cold-blooded murder of 20 kindergarten students with an assault weapon, it seems to me that politics in Washington have become more divisive than ever. In the three months since the Newtown massacre, no responsive action whatsoever has been taken by the federal government.

It’s not because nothing can be done. There are plenty of viable options that the federal government could consider. For example, they could act to increase funding for mental health institutions across the nation, so that people get the psychiatric care that they need before it’s too late. They could also choose to enact basic gun control measures such as limiting rounds on high-capacity magazines, forcing shooters to have to reload more frequently or reinstating and enforcing a stronger assault weapons ban like the one that was active from 1994–2004 but consistently unenforced. Congress could also choose to enact universal criminal and mental health background checks on gun buyers or ban the possession of military-style armor-piercing bullets by anyone other than the military.

These proposed measures have not only the overwhelming support of Connecticut residents but also strong majority support from the entire nation. In fact, some of these measures, including the implementation of a universal background check on gun buyers, are so noncontroversial that they are favored by over 90 percent of Americans and three-quarters of the members of the National Rifle Association (NRA). Furthermore, back in 1999, current NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, one of today’s most outspoken figures in opposition to gun laws, called a universal background check “entirely reasonable” and advocated for its implementation.

Yet, if it is the role of the federal government to be responsive to the will of its people, then quite simply, the government is failing at its job. As of right now, none of this widely supported legislation has even as much as come up for a vote in either chamber of Congress. Rather, special interest groups, along with a general unwillingness to compromise, are preventing any action from being taken for the sake of families like mine across the state of Connecticut and across the nation, families who were in emotional shambles after the Newtown tragedy. What many legislators in Washington fail to realize is that doing nothing is not an option. For the past decade in America, there have been far too many victims of mass gun violence and too many worlds of these victims’ families, friends and communities have been forever shaken to their core to afford more silence from the federal government.

The time for change is now. We need to end this political infighting and come together as one. As a nation, we cannot become desensitized to these repeated mass incidents of gun violence and accept tens of thousands of people dying each year from gun violence as “normal”. If there is even the slightest action that we can take to try to prevent this horrific pattern in recent American history, we have an obligation to take it.

The people of Connecticut agree. To us, it is unacceptable for Congress to let the children of Newtown die in vain. They have a moral obligation to act, whatever that action may be, on behalf of these victims to attempt to prevent atrocities like this from happening in the future. And, until they do, Connecticut will not remain silent.