When School Shooters Kill the Kids of NRA Members
How many parents of school shooting victims belong to the 5 million member National Rifle Association (NRA)? How many did before the tragic loss of a child? I don't ask these questions to be callous, knowing with every fiber of my being that such a loss is an abyss with no bottom. I do so out of a genuine yearning to understand the culture of gun ownership and the hold that the NRA maintains over so large a segment of America.
I don't have answers to either question. NRA records are private and I have neither the fortitude nor the emotional steeliness to piddle around in the personal affairs of grieving families. But I have shifted my attention from the school shooters to their victims. It is because we forget in our shock and horror each time one of these school shootings occurs, that it is the culture of gun ownership, not merely the behavior of the "crazed" shooter that is, often shared by both the families of the victims, who cherish their Second Amendment Rights, as well as those of the perpetrators, who just so happen to have mis-applied that right on the day of the tragic event.
I don't have answers to either question. NRA records are private and I have neither the fortitude nor the emotional steeliness to piddle around in the personal affairs of grieving families. But I have shifted my attention from the school shooters to their victims. It is because we forget in our shock and horror each time one of these school shootings occurs, that it is the culture of gun ownership, not merely the behavior of the "crazed" shooter that is, often shared by both the families of the victims, who cherish their Second Amendment Rights, as well as those of the perpetrators, who just so happen to have mis-applied that right on the day of the tragic event.
Does the Second Amendment have a different texture and feel for a grieving NRA parent, than it did a week before the tragedy occurred? I'm just asking.
