When Will It Be Enough?

I didn't want to write this post!

I am both sickened and heartsick.

The assignation of Charlie Kirk yesterday was horrific,

and my heart goes out to his family and friends.

Charlie Kirk

July 2025

Wikipedia

The murder of Charlie Kirk yesterday was another tragic event

in a long list of politically motivated attacks and killings in recent years.

People on the "left" and the "right" have been attacking and killing fellow Americans,

because they disagree with their political views and actions.

Political violence is wrong, period.

When is enough going to be enough to promote change?

Are we going to continue to spiral down into worse and worse violence,

or are we going start reaching out to those who think differently from us

in an attempt to better understand each other better and to find common ground?

Guns and violence cannot continue to be the answer.

Our country is broken, and we need to find a way to mend it.

Tear gas outside the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021

Photo by Tyler Merbler ~ Wikimedia ~ License

Mostly lost in the atrocious news of Charlie Kirk's death yesterday

was the news of yet another school shooting in Colorado.

A high school student at Evergreen High School shot two of his classmates 

then turned the gun on himself.

The unidentified shooter died, and his two victims were hospitalized in critical condition.

One student has since been released, the other remains in critical condition.

When is enough going to be enough?

Columbine wasn't.  Sandy Hook wasn't.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas wasn't.  Uvalde wasn't.

I have written about school gun violence in the past.  Friday, May 27, 2022

I almost wrote about it again, after the heartbreaking shooting

at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis on August 27, 2025.

As I see it, America loves its guns more than its children.

Actions speak louder than words.  

Source

A common denominator in political violence and school violence is guns.

These aren't the only kinds of gun violence.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's 

Center for Gun Violence Solution's

most recent report on gun violence in the US (2023) states: 

"27,300 people died by firearm suicide, 17,927 died by firearm homicide, 463 died by unintentional gun injury, and an estimated 604 were fatally shot by law enforcement. In addition, an average of more than 200 Americans visit the emergency department for nonfatal firearm injuries each day." Source 

When is enough going to be enough?

How many people have to die before we enact changes to our gun laws?

The October 1, 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, with its 60 dead, 413 wounded, 

and 394 injured in the gunfire-induced panic wasn't enough.

The Las Vegas Sign on The Strip, October 9, 2017, 

covered in flowers in the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting.

Rmvisuals ~ Wikimedia ~ License

Political violence, school shootings, and gun violence in our country

continue to shock and stun me.

Something has got to change!

We need to reach out and communicate with those who have different political views.

Not kill each other.

We need to address school shootings and find real solutions.

Not sit back and accept our children continuing to die.

We need to strengthen our patchwork quilt of state and federal gun laws

with some reasonable, research-based changes such as

universal background checks, waiting periods between buying and possessing guns,

firearms safety training, and secure gun storage.

Not wallow in the carnage and accept it as a way of life.

South L.A. residents rally to end gun violence.

Photo by Luke Harold ~ Wikimedia ~ License

I'm really discouraged right now.

Every time I think of Charlie Kirk, I literally feel nauseous 

from the horror, the senselessness, and the loss of his young life.

And I feel heartsick for his wife and children.

I didn't agree with him politically, but I would have loved to have conversation with him.

No one should be murdered like that!

I feel almost hopeless over the continued school shootings

and the unending gun violence in our country.

But I haven't given up.

I'll regroup and continue to stand up and speak about my beliefs.

I have faith in our country.

We've gone through very dark periods in the past.

I believe we'll get through this difficult time too.

Have a good weekend everyone!

 Till next time ~

 Fundy Blue

 

Standing Into Danger                                    https://selkiegrey4.blogspot.com

 Copyright ©2025 – All rights reserved.

My next post will be 

Friday, September 19, 2025 🤞 

On the Bay of Fundy
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

 

America, This Is Exactly Who We Are!

We are a nation that loves our guns more than we love our children.

Don't waste your time telling me that we are not. 

Our inaction over gun violence since Columbine almost a generation ago

shows exactly what we value.

If we truly cared, we would have acted, made changes, addressed gun violence. 

President Biden got it right when he addressed the nation 

after the horrific mass shooting at Robb Elementary School 

in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022:

"As a nation, we have to ask: 

When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?

When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?"

I remember only too well when this national horror and shame

burst into our consciousness:

Columbine.  Colorado.  April 20, 1999.  Twenty-three years ago.

And the school mass shootings have piled up non-stop ever since.

Sandy Hook.  Stoneman Douglas.  Santa Fe.  Red Lake.  

We are a nation that is willing to endure too many of its citizens slaughtered 

by gun violence, because we love our guns more.

I live in Colorado where fellow Coloradans have been slaughtered

in school and in church and at the grocery store and at the movie theater.

Aurora.  Boulder.  Littleton.  Denver-Lakewood.  Highland Ranch.  Arvada.

All sites of some of the mass shootings in our Denver Metro area alone.

I can't keep track of them all.  There have been too many.

  

We do not act to decrease gun violence and mass shootings.  

We live with the risk because, as a nation, we love our guns more.

Almost five years ago, a mass shooter in Las Vegas fired a thousand rounds

from the 32nd story of the Mandalay Bay Hotel 

on a large outdoor group of concert goers. 

60 slaughtered.  411 wounded.  Over 400 more injured in the ensuing panic.

Obviously the bodies weren't piled deep enough, because we have failed to act.

We, as a nation, love our guns more.  

How many bodies from hated-based killings, homicides, drive by shootings, 

roving killers, suicides, and deadly gun accidents 

will it take to outweigh our love for guns.

Far, far more than anywhere else in the world.

Spare me your blather about thoughts and prayers and grief and God,

those of you who take money from the NRA for your political gain.

Those of you attending The National Rifle Association Conference 

in Houston, Texas this weekend,

while the truly-grieving parents of Uvalde, Texas

are arranging funerals for their dead children shredded by an assault gun ~

the AR-15 style rifle, dubbed "America's rifle" by the NRA.

You love your guns more than you love our nation's children, citizens, and residents.

Your actions speak far louder than your blather,

as you hold your hands out for more gun money.

"America's rifle" is a rifle that was designed to shred human beings on the battlefield.

As President Biden said, 

"Deer aren’t running through the forest with Kevlar vests on, for God’s sake."

Children are our hopes, our dreams, our futures.

They are precious to us.

They fill our lives with love and meaning.

Each one deserves to be cherished and loved and guided and protected.

The parents, the siblings, the extended families who have had children

slaughtered by guns will never be whole again.

That lost child will be missing from their lives for all the decades to come.

They are irreplaceable.

So much joy, happiness, love, and potential ripped from families in a heartbeat.

Gone.  Forever.  Irreplaceable.

What might the children have become, have done, if they had lived?

Today I quickly pulled random pictures from my extensive collection of photographs.

Most were taken by me.  Some were not.

Most of these children are the ages of the Uvalde children who were slaughtered.

They come from around the world and from several generations.

Most are anonymous children who crossed paths with me in fleeting seconds,

children who touched my heart with their innocence, vulnerability, honesty, 

their beauty, and sincerity.

 

Some are personal.  

Because it is at the personal level that we can truly grasp the horror, 

truly imagine the terrible loss of someone we love and could never replace.

Lost, not just in the moment, but in all the years of our future.

We could start to address gun violence by passing laws 

that the majority of Americans support:

* actually providing more funding for mental health screening and treatment

* mandatory and universal background checks

* licensing for gun purchases

* a national "redflag" law.

We have to begin somewhere, somehow to reverse 

the tide of gun violence that is drowning our nation.

Gun violence and mass shootings are complicated problems,

and finding solutions will not be easy.

But until we act we will continue to show the world that we are the nation

that loves its guns more than it loves its children.

We can't throw up our hands, give into despair, not act, 

even with powerful industries, lobbies, and political forces arrayed against us.

We can't continue like this, huddling and hiding 

in schools and stores and theaters and beauty spas. 

We must demonstrate that we are a nation that loves its children more than guns.

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue



On the Bay of Fundy
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved