drive bys

One of these days, we are going to have to decide whether it is okay to have Americans dying because of gun violence. Since Friday, December 14, 2012, the date of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, over 480 Americans have died secondary to gun violence.

The shooting that stands out, at least for me, is a three-year-old boy who somehow got a gun and shot himself in the head. A three-year-old child got his hands on a gun. Think about it. A three-year old child. This child was at the house of an Oklahoma state trooper. If anyone would know about gun safety, you would figure it would be a state trooper. Yet…a three-year-old is dead. A town is grieving. A family is devastated. This is something that they will never get over.

In Kansas City, there was a four-year-old who was put into a car seat when another car drove up and opened fire. One of the bullets hit the four-year-old in the head. “He was innocent and he was just lifeless,” said (Jody) Palmer (who was the first one to the body). “All my life I’ve never seen nothing so devastating. I’m unable to eat, I’m unable to sleep because I see this baby in my head. You know it’s hard.” As with many of these kind of drive-bys, nobody knows nothing. The person who pulled the trigger is still at large.

So what are we going to do, understanding that no solution is going to be perfect? Guns are a part of America. We aren’t going to get rid of guns. I don’t think that I want to, but we need to do something.