When I was 23, a mentally ill person bought two handguns and took them to two separate buildings 200 yards away from my apartment and killed 32 people.
I was on the student paper that day at Virginia Tech, and interviewed a parent who lost his daughter in the shooting. He’s since become an advocate for gun control, and I’ve thought about him after every mass shooting that’s happened in America since. How hard it must be, to relive so fucking frequently the worst day of your life, and to, afterward, routinely have to watch this nation’s cavalier inaction in the aftermaths of these.
To say, “All I want is for other people to not have to go through what I went through,” and have that be met with the collective dismissal.
And then for the cycle to repeat and repeat and repeat itself. Say all you want about whether guns should be more regulated in America, just imagine for a second that perpetual awfulness being a part of your life.
Well, not anymore. Because today, Peter Read, who lost his daughter Mary, along with other parents who’d lost their children in other massacres and experienced the same continual, repeated grief, got to stand with the President of the United States as he said he was going to do something about it.
Obama also felt the magnitude of the situation, breaking down as he asked that all we do is try not to have this happen again.
All we do is try. That’s all people have been asking all this time.
Amazingly, that’s finally happening.
[Video via UPROXX]