The loss of 17 lives in the school shooting in Parklands, Florida in February really upset me. I am not sure if it was the tragic loss of innocent life or imagining being in the shoes of their parents and not knowing how I would cope.
In the days that followed, there was a glimmer of hope that some good may come from the tragedy. One of the parents, Andrew Pollack did a great job of focusing us all of making the schools safe. The politicians in Florida led by Gov Rick Scott all gave a little and found they could compromise to take at least a small step in the better direction. Trump had parents, families and other stakeholders to the White House and actively engaged with them on how to make schools safer.
So why am I feeling sad now?
It seems the whole process has become bogged down in a battle between the left and the right. They trade insults and focused grouped one liners trying to win cheap political points. In the meantime, the rest of us are just hunkered down in the middle wishing they would get on with making the schools safer.
The gun sales that exploded Obama (check out this graph) had dropped with the election of Trump. So much so that the gun manufacturer Remington that was founded in 1816 filed for bankruptcy, Smith & Wesson stock price dropped by half, and many gun sellers were reporting sales down by 10% to 25% over the prior year.
Since the Gun Control lobby kicked into high gear after the Parkland school shooting the media is reporting "Gun Sales Soar, Set Record in March Amid Push for New Gun-Control Measures":
"Sales of semi-auto rifles, especially AR and AK platforms, have more than doubled in sales since the Florida shooting and subsequent media coverage of possible pending legislation," Rex McClanahan, owner of one of the biggest online gun dealers, Bud's Gun Shop, told the Washington Free Beacon at the end of February.
So if the Gun Control's purpose over the last couple of months was to reduce the number of guns - then they failed badly. So please change tactics to produce positive outcomes in terms of safety for all.
To the NRA, a gun may not kill people by itself. We do not need to be told over and over that it needs a person hanging on to the end of it to kill someone. What we need is to see less gun deaths. Show us you care and find a way to move the gun deaths rate down - because what has been done over the past 15 years has not worked.