Maybe this time, the children will lead us past the gunplay. You’ve seen them down in Parkland, Fla., right? They’re out there – the survivors of last week’s school shooting – speaking with an eloquence, and a courage, far beyond those cowards who claim to represent them in the halls of the U.S. Congress.
Maybe this time, someone will listen.
In our naiveté, we imagined common-sense gun laws in the aftermath of Sandy Hook Elementary, where 17 little children were killed and another 27 wounded.
Just as we imagined it after Columbine High, where 15 died and 24 were wounded.
Just as we imagined it after the carnage at Virginia Tech, with 32 dead and 17 wounded.
Children every time, whose lives were snuffed out. And nothing was done about it beyond those empty, empty words of those who live inside the pockets of the National Rifle Association: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims.”
Yes, thoughts and prayers.
But their money’s with the NRA, which bankrolls the politicians who vote against gun control, and goes after those who dare vote for sanity.
So maybe the children will have some effect this time.
In the aftermath of last week’s mass shooting, which took 17 lives, these high school kids have been standing in front of TV cameras, talking to reporters, calling out the cowards in Washington who would rather watch the killing continue than risk their own jobs.
Imagine what these kids are going through as they return to class. There’s a teacher telling them, “Let’s look at these French verbs we were studying last week …” Or, “Let’s talk about parallelograms today.” And the kids are thinking, “Wait a minute, over there in the corner, that’s where I saw my best friend’s body lying lifeless.”
We all know our parts in the national gun drama a little too well now. Some of us argue for sanity – a ban on the high-tech weapons of easy mass killing, enhanced background checks.
Then, we have President Donald Trump, who can’t even bring himself to use the word “gun” when he talks about the killings. Instead, he said, “So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed.” Then, he went on TV and repeated that phrase, “mentally disturbed.”
Here’s a question for this profoundly uninformed man, and everyone else making the mental health argument: Do they think America’s the only country with “mentally disturbed” people? Great Britain has them. So do Japan and Russia and every other nation on earth.
But only America has this level of gunplay – because only America has such easy access to the guns.
A year ago, in his inauguration speech, Trump talked about violence and street crime and declared, “This American carnage stops right here and right now.”
Does last week’s killing not fit the very definition of carnage? If we can’t take every possible step to protect our own children in their schools, what kind of people are we?
At the moment, in Parkland, Fla., we’re a people relying on the voices of our children, who are desperately trying to save themselves because the adults continue to do nothing.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” has just been re-issued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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