A Simple Way to Work Against Gun Violence

It’s a lazy Sunday morning in Texas. My dear friend Kathy, who I met when we were seventeen, is reading the San Antonio Express-News. I’m Googling “gun deaths in the United States.” 

My last post was a primal scream. I was in despair, and based on the comments, so were you. This morning, I was Googling around and found out that the number of people killed in Las Vegas was a drop in the bucket. The staggering truth is that almost 36,000 people die by gunshot in the US every year. 32 people a day are murdered by gunfire. 4 of them are children or teens. This didn’t lift my gloom, but something else did.

I’ve heard that if you’re feeling overwhelmingly bummed out about something, one strategy is to take a tiny step related to a fix.

I think I found a tiny step I can take that might help fight gun violence. 

Do you remember Jim Brady, the man who was part of President Ronald Reagan’s White House staff when Reagan was nearly assassinated? Brady took a bullet to the brain. He recovered and lived many more years, during which time he and his wife, Sarah, developed a campaign to fight gun violence.

I ran across their website and since I can’t go back to doing nothing, I signed up to receive email alerts. I might donate; I might attend an event. It’s not much, but you never know. Are you feeling the same as me? Maybe this could be a simple first step for you, too. Here’s the link:

Let me know if you decide to do something, and if so, what it was.

Thanks for your patience as I agonize over this issue. I don’t like to talk politics but this is more than that, and the way I see it, children’s lives depend on change happening. What kind of change? I don’t know. But I feel absolutely certain that to do nothing is to convey acceptance of the carnage.

See you Friday.