It’s up to voters to say ‘enough’
“Victim” is a terrible title to bear. To be remembered solely as a victim rewrites a person’s history. Millions may know their name, but only as one who suffered. Just a few will remember who they were before those last, labeling moments.
For a loved one to be reduced to a victim adds to the pain of loss. Instinctively, some compassionate souls recognize the extra layer of grief, and in kindness these people make memorials with photos and toys and flowers or supply caskets decorated to reflect what the one being buried enjoyed in life. Mourners tell their stories. The living feel the need to do something to rail against the futility of it all.
Every decent American ought to be feeling the same need right now, after the victimization of 10 adults at a Buffalo supermarket, 19 children and two adults in a Texas elementary school, and four people in a medical building in Tulsa. As everyone knows, they are the latest to die at the hands of heavily armed men intent on terrorizing and killing.
The stakes are so high that safety and law enforcement officials tell airline passengers, students and bus and train riders to say something if they see something. The logical response from authorities to someone who sees something and says something is to do something about it. Not acting to prevent potential deadly harm wastes the courage of the person who reported what they saw. It signals others not to bother.
Connecticut’s U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who represented Newtown in Congress at the time of the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings in 2012, erupted in anger and sorrow on the Senate floor in the hours after the Uvalde attack May 24. He said what polls tell us most shocked Americans were thinking: Do something. “At least stop sending this quiet message of endorsement to these killers,” said Murphy.
Three days later, no Republicans in the Senate could find it in their hearts to do something, defeating a domestic terrorism bill that had passed the House. Murphy and Sen. Richard Blumenthal are actively leading bipartisan negotiations in the hope of finding common ground on background checks and red flag processes. It’s something. And as Murphy wrote in an Op Ed article for Fox News, “My Republican colleagues and I don’t agree on much, but this time, I’m hopeful we can agree on this: inaction cannot be our answer.”
Inaction wasn’t the answer from some of those caught in the Buffalo and Uvalde episodes. In the seconds they had they refused to go quietly. They refused to be victims.
Supermarket security guard Aaron Salter Jr., a retired Buffalo police officer, confronted the gunman and fired at him, but body armor protected the shooter, who shot and killed Salter. He is hailed as a hero for his self-sacrifice.
And in an attempt that has wrenched the hearts of parents and grandparents everywhere, a girl trapped in the Robb Elementary School fourth-grade classroom with the shooter, the injured and those already dead, made repeated cellphone calls to 911, pleading “send the police now.” She bravely did all she could do.
Police, as we have since learned were outside, but in spite of recognized response protocols they repeated the tactic that cost lives at Columbine High School in 1999. They waited outside. In effect, they failed to do something.
Last week the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on a Democrat-introduced bill, Protecting Our Kids Act, that would raise the age threshold to 21 for purchasing a semi-automatic centerfire rifle, put a federal ban on importing, manufacturing or possessing large-capacity magazines and re-enforce an executive ban on so-called ghost guns. Nineteen Republicans voted against it. A vote by the full House could come this week.
Sorrow after sorrow would be burden enough, but we have to live with repeated failure, too. Unless Congress acts, we will keep seeing multiple victims. And then it’s up to voters to say “Enough” and elect representatives who will do something about it.