gun control — Page 2

Search Day

March 14, 2018 at 9:17 am by Claudia

The bus trip to Manhattan was on time and smooth as silk, even with snow blowing everywhere. By the time I started the schlep to the apartment, snow and sleet were coming at me horizontally. A very strange weather day, which, as we left for dinner, ended up looking like this:

Go figure.

We spent the afternoon together and then had a bite to eat with Rick. Then it was off to the theater for Don and back to the apartment for me.

I did not have a good night’s sleep, however. The people upstairs seem to walk endlessly in the apartment and I can hear every heavy clomp of their feet. Even with our white noise machine on. And then, this morning, a truck on the street below started unloading at 6 am. I’m not a happy camper. While I love NYC, having someone above us and noise on the street below is hard to adjust to and I’m never here long enough to get used to it.

But I’m here with my dearest and we’re drinking coffee and all is well. Soon, I’ll get ready for the ‘search.’ I’ll be headed to Macy’s because it’s huge and they have everything there. I’d like to be efficient about the whole thing.

Because shopping is not my favorite thing to do.

Don has two shows today, so it’s a perfect day for me to go off and find something to wear.

Bravo to the students who are walking out of school today for 17 minutes – one for each student killed with an assault weapon.

Bravo to Conor Lamb who won the election in PA last night.

And RIP to Stephen Hawking. Such brilliance is fittingly home again among the stars.

Happy Wednesday.

Action, Not Words

February 15, 2018 at 9:36 am by Claudia

I’m throwing a picture in this post for you. It has nothing to do with the post.

I can’t write anything today other than my despair and rage that a frigging gun lobby has bought and paid for politicians. It’s the equivalent of hush money. “As long as you don’t let any legislation through, we’ll keep funding your campaigns.”

So once again we get ‘thoughts and prayers’ statements, as well as ‘this isn’t the time.’

It’s time. It’s been time.

When money and power trumps the rights of our children to go to school and feel safe, a moral line has been crossed and those who have crossed it are complicit.

We have elections coming up. Vote them out. If they won’t take action, if the lives of innocent Americans don’t matter to them, we need to take action in the voting booth. And do me a favor: do a search for who has taken money from the NRA, and how much. It’s shocking.

It’s blood money.

Cut the NRA off at its knees by voting in candidates who do not take money from them. They’ve become a domestic terrorist organization, far from what they used to be. That is exactly the reason my father left after years of membership. He saw what Wayne LaPierre was doing and wanted no part in it.

The NRA and gun manufacturers profit from violence. That profit is more important to them than human lives.

Enough.

Thoughts on This Tuesday

November 7, 2017 at 9:36 am by Claudia

Thank you for your comments yesterday. I remember exactly when I became a gun control activist. It was May 1, 1994, when John Lentz, who was a student in our MFA program and one of my favorite people, was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Balboa Park in San Diego. He was just a few weeks away from receiving his MFA degree. He was 24 years old.

He was killed by a 17 year old girl who was riding with two men who were felons. The handgun was obtained illegally and far, far too easily. On a whim, they decided to stop John and his girlfriend (also my student) as they walked home after a closing night party. They pulled up next to them, the killer aimed her gun, and she shot both of them.

Words cannot express the heartbreak we all felt. We knew John’s family. We had spent time with them. They were and are lovely people, all that is good. We flew to Kansas for his funeral. He was funny, intelligent, kind and very talented. He was on the brink of a career in acting. He had everything to live for. And it was all wiped out in a second. I sat through portions of the trial later that summer, trying to support John’s mother as she grieved, staring down the killer. It was awful.

I vowed then and there to fight for gun control and, though the years since have seen more and more mass murders, more and more carnage, and it sometimes feels fruitless, I am as committed as ever.

I am also very familiar with the NRA. My father was a member for years. I was never a fan of guns and I have always been anti-hunting. But the NRA in those days was a very different entity than the the NRA of today, which is now being led by extremists. To my father’s everlasting credit, when he realized what it had become, he ended his membership. We had a conversation about that not long before he died.

Guns are meant to harm and/or kill. Even if they’re being used for defense, the end result is the same. The difference being that a musket was loaded one musket ball at a time. A semi-automatic rifle can kill or injure many people in what seems like the blink of an eye.

Those are my thoughts this morning. That there are responsible and sane members of the NRA is not open to debate. That the leaders of the NRA and the lobbyists and their spokespeople are doing everything they can to stop any meaningful gun control is also not open to debate. Sandy Hook, which I pass every time I drive to Connecticut, should have changed everything.

It changed nothing.

If you’re in a state with elections today, vote. I am.

And please, no NRA apologists. There is no apology for that organization in its current form. None.

Let’s end with some of nature’s beauty, shall we?

It was rainy all day yesterday until late in the afternoon, when the sun peeked through the dark clouds and the landscape lit up for about five minutes. Fortunately, I noticed and ran for my camera.

Stay hopeful in the face of despair. Fight for what is right.

Happy Tuesday.

Search Day

Action, Not Words

Thoughts on This Tuesday

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