Imagine a moment in your life that you can visualize in vivid detail. Maybe it is an early childhood birthday party surrounded by your friends looking at the cake someone worked so hard to bring to you. Maybe it is your graduation, and you can remember the smell of the room and anxiously wondering what might come next. Maybe it is your wedding standing opposite to your spouse to be and crying at the life you hope to have together. Imagine it as clearly as possible. Every sense: the sights, smells, tastes, touch and sounds. Bang! You’ve been shot. You have a split second to recognize that it’s over, and then you are dead. Everything that comes after that moment never happens. There is nothing after that gunshot. There is nothing for you anymore. You are dead because someone squeezed their finger. This is the reality roughly 125 people face every single day in America.

This is the culture we Americans have fostered. Because we are so afraid of having our guns taken away, we refuse to entertain fortifying the process they are obtained with. Just as the DMV is not trying to take your cars, they only want to make sure it’s safe for you to have one. Likewise, gun control will not take your guns, it will just make it harder for unfit people to get their hands on a device designed solely to kill. But the protections are minor. Nearly nominal.

Last week, one school shooting in Colorado was overshadowed by another in Utah. The school year has barely just begun. It does not matter if guns kill people or people kill people, it matters that people are dying. Your thoughts and prayers are appreciated, but your action is required if you want to help prevent these deaths.

America is not our guns, America is the people. And when the people die, so does America.

Godspeed,
MJ Mac (22, he/him)