I fired a gun once. Sort of. I dated a boy in high school who was into historic war reenactments. I think he and his crew were reenacting the War of 1812, but I can’t remember for sure. I spent a whole day at one of these gatherings. I stood out not because I was a pacifist but because I alone was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. We broke up before I made my own period costume out of muslin (thank goodness), but that afternoon I spent hours rolling bits of newspaper around gunpowder. Towards the end of the day, the general (or whatever) showed me how to load up the long, heavy rifle, explained how to work the mechanism and handed it over. I put the thing to my shoulder, aimed at the sky and shot. It just about knocked me over and my clothes smelled of gunpowder and burned for days afterwards.
It was just that once, more than 20 years ago. I hope it was the first and last time I will hold a gun of any sort. I thought of that long-forgotten afternoon last week when I bused up to Hartford to stand with thousands of Connecticut residents for safe and secure gun laws. Valentine’s Day is often associated with the color red, with red roses and chocolate covered cherries and red satin lingerie, but in Hartford on February 14, the color was green. I was one of more than 5,000 people who traveled from across Connecticut to support stricter laws and regulations for gun ownership. As Dannel Malloy, our governor, said to the throng: “You can’t be getting on a plane without getting a background check, you shouldn’t be getting a gun without a background check.”
I had never been to a demonstration where I stood next to ladies in calf-length fur coats with $5,000 handbags. Beside them, I felt like a schlump in my many wooly layers. But our faces were all wet with tears as we listened to Veronique Pozner talk about her 6-year-old son Noah, gunned down on December 14. “Never will he feel the sunlight on his face, the companionship of a family who adores him, the taste of a good meal or to get to dig a hole all the way to China, as he strove to do every summer day at the beach,” she said, her voice strong and sad at the same time. It was just two months since his death, and she and other Newtown parents had found purpose and strength in pushing hard for sane gun laws.
The measures they are promoting (along with Connecticut Against Gun Violence) have been characterized as sweeping, comprehensive, harsh, drastic (and probably lots of other more profane things). Here are a few:
To me — the gun-toting teenager though I was — it sounds like common sense, especially in light of the unimaginable burden of pain and loss being carried by so many parents and family members. And I am not just talked about the Pozner family or the 25 other Newtown families. Slate maintains a crowd-sourced tally of the number of people killed by firearms in the United States since the Sandy Hook massacre. The total, when I checked on Wednesday, was 1,999 men, women and children killed throughout the country.
Joe Nocera — a columnist and blogger for The New York Times — offers a more granular perspective, compiling news reports on gun violence. He began the report with the reminder that there are 18 gun deaths a day in this country. Read it as a heart-breaking and tragic dispatch from a nation saturated with guns and at war with itself. Google “shooting,” and find stories like:
Standing in the cold, wearing green, crying and clapping and chanting for safe, sensible gun laws along with thousands of others, I felt proud of my chosen home. The people of Connecticut are turning unthinkable tragedy into concrete policy change. It might not be the most radical thing I’ve ever done, but it was radically hopeful to be part of that change-making.
So well said, thank you for supporting this sanity. I’m from southwest Virginia, and believe me there are people here that are so strong in their 2nd amendment rights, I actually think they believe it (the amendment) comes from the Bible!
What is the significance of a 7 round limit? It seems like most things I see, including Sen. Feinstein’s bill, propose a 10 round limit.
Thank you Frida for this moving piece. It is always inspiring to see how a tragedy can turn into an act of resistance. I’d been hearing that the Newtown families had been organizing for tighter gun laws. I wonder: do you know more about how that organizing happened? I wonder whether it came from structured or unstructured conversations? Whether other gun safety activists were involved in helping get the families started? I’d love to hear more about the process that went into this action–if anyone knows?