How many children have to die before America changes its gun laws?

The news from Uvalde elementary school in Texas tonight is unthinkable. At least 14 children between the ages of five and 11 – the same age as our families ,our kids – and a teacher, dead after an active shooter was reported at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, according to the district at the time of writing.

It is tragic, terrible – and enraging. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to write about the death of innocent children at the hands of guns in the supposed land of the free, and it won’t be the last. So what, now, is America going to do about it?

"Marjorie Stoneman, Santa Fe, Oxford High School in Michigan ... the list goes on and on and grows when you include mass shootings at movie theatres, houses of worship, and as we saw 10 days ago at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York."

Many gun violence victims are young, but there are older, terrible losses, too.

Breonna Taylor – a medical worker – died after a botched raid on her apartment last year. George Floyd – it’s the two-year anniversary of his death at the hands of a white former Minneapolis police officer tomorrow, on May 25. Some names stick out. Many have rightfully sparked protest. But others will already be forgotten. Why?

 
Well, if these stories sound like numbers to you, if it feels like they blur, could that not be because they’ve become so commonplace as to be obscene? As to almost (though certainly never for the families) have become routine? The headlines merge into one, and the world sighs: a dozen or so dead. A tragedy at a university campus, a work place, a spa, a nightclub, a grocery store. Little more than two weeks ago, a gunman with a rifle and body armour opened fire at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

Another day in America, another mass shooting. What a terrible waste of life!

The gun manufacturers have spent two decades aggressively marketing assault weapons which make them the most and largest profit. For God's sake, we have to have the courage to stand up to the industry.

"How many scores of little children who witnessed what happened, see their friends die, as if they're in a battlefield, for God's sake?"

JOIN ME IN THIS PETITION TO CHANGE THIS FOREVER! NO MORE INNOCENT LIVES SHALL BE LOST!