A friend of mine on Facebook asked me why our movement has not been more successful. This is my reply:
This is a tough issue. For one thing, like most people, I saw the stories about all these tragedies and thought, "this is horrible for them but it could never happen to me or my kids because the odds are so against it." From a statistical standpoint that's nearly true. (Key word: "nearly.")
These atrocities happen, we get upset about them and then go back to our daily lives after a while...unless it happened to you or someone you know. Elliott Rodger's mission was a failure. He set out with 3 guns and 400 rounds of ammunition on that Friday night to kill dozens of girls. His plan was to enter a specific sorority that he had identified as his target and shoot everyone inside. The door was locked so he got back in his car and started shooting random kids, drive-by style.. Instead of the 50 girls inside the house at the time, he only shot and killed 3 students, 2 girls.
So, in a nation of 300 million, a few got shot. A moment of silence and back to business as usual for the almost all of us. Many of us survivors become activists, only to be shouted down by a rabid, mislead, well-funded gun "rights" lobby. The people who are trying to make the world a little safer from gun violence are terribly "outgunned" by the power of the those on the other side of the issue but we will keep fighting.
Ironically and sadly, thanks to gun violence, our small but determined ranks grow on a daily basis. We really have no choice but to fight for sanity in this matter because, unlike our adversaries, we know and will live the horror of gun violence every moment for the rest of our lives. We want to prevent it from happening to you and your kids.
Bottom line, our movement is so small because people think, like I did, that it could never happen to them.
I'm weird. I'm one of the few this hasn't happened to a close family member. Still, I know too many people who have been effected by this to not be touched.
