A poster on the wall of my office shows a beautiful little boy from Sudan with a bit of sand on his check and a heavy turban around his head. The inscription reads: "What do you want to be when you grow up? Alive." I used to think this poster referred only to the children of Africa where it came from and where children are decimated by famine, poverty, civil wars and political corruption. Now I realize it applies to all our children, too.
Why? Because the Senate in its infinite corruption preferred to give in to the pressures of the gun lobby rather than help us save our children. According to The Guardian, all but three of the 46 senators who voted "no" on the gun legislation received money from firearms lobbyists. By the time of the 2014 mid-term elections, more than 30,000 Americans will die from a firearm, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mortality statistics; and, since 1982, according to Mother Jones, there have been 62 mass shootings. Let the blood of the next massacre be on our senators' hands.
Meanwhile, firearm deaths cost the U.S. some $37 billion in 2005, also according to the CDC, and the cost for survivors of gun violence adds another $3.7 billion. There are countries with better gun control and equally passionate hunters yet the United States leads all advanced countries with its 3.59 per 100,000 rate of gun homicides.
This is too high a figure to solely be a matter of mental health.
What are we ready to do so that we can say to our children "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and not have to worry they will have to say "alive."
Isabelle Kaplan
Pittsfield, Mass.