Shushed in past, it’s time to speak
Is Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Cameron Kasky going to end my 44 years of being shushed?
The first time I witnessed gun shushing was as a registered nurse in Manassas, Va., in 1974 in an ICU caring for a paraplegic 16-year-old boy shot in a hunting accident. His father was sternly admonishing him not to blame the rifle as this was their way of life. I was a Northerner, a wife of a soldier, newly back from Vietnam. I did not know how to comfort my patient, my husband, myself.
I matured. Nursing matured. I became a nurse practitioner. I was humbled in 2014 while living in Florida by the NRA influence on shushing professionals by denying the simple process of primary prevention of information gathering on a safe environment (Docs and Glocks).
Simultaneously, I visited family in Texas. My teenage grandson’s friend took his life with a gun. I was shushed, once again, with a dismissive quip from my son, “He could have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge.”
A trusted counselor dismissed the toll of gun violence in this country as little compared to what happened during World War II. A neighbor, during a birthday celebration, recited statistics of drunk driving being a worse scourge (in the presence of a mother of a veteran who took his life with a gun).
So after 44 years of being shushed by hubris and contemplating leaving the USA in order for my great grand-children to have the opportunity to choose a safer future, Cameron Kasky and his brave, articulate classmates appear and give me hope. Could this be the end of the NRA nightmare?
MARILYN WINTERS, WEST PALM BEACH