People En Espanol's Armando Correa Writes Gun Control Op-Ed

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Enough!

Silence makes us guilty. Silence condemns us. Every time I wake up to news of another mass shooting, I can't help but think of my children. The days pass and we forget to protect ourselves. Two weeks later, the images return of a young man who couldn't control his fury and killed dozens of people without a second thought. And we continue to do nothing, waiting for the next massacre.

We live in a country where bearing arms, buying them, is protected under the Constitution. I know it's part of this country's essence - a country that is now mine, where I belong, where my children were born. But every time I see that an 18-year-old can't buy alcohol - and in some states can't buy a pack of cigarettes - but is considered mature enough to buy an assault rifle and all the ammunition his heart desires, I get chills.

I sometimes feel like in the most powerful nation in the world, the epitome of the First World, we are fighting a civil war where we fear each other - those who are different, those who believe in a different God, those who have a different skin color or sexual orientation that bothers us. The majority of these killers who seek out Mexicans at a Walmart, or those who fashion themselves as some sort of Rambo and go into an elementary school to massacre children, or a shooter who takes aim from a hotel window and kills indiscriminately, can be your neighbor, your friend, a family member, or more tragically, your child.

What can we do? We're not going to change the Constitution. No one is going to prohibit US citizens from bearing arms. Hunting is a sport: People can let off steam killing deer, bears, elephants. But can't we demand that those whose testosterone levels incite them to buy weapons - some with enough firepower to kill an entire county of people - are checked for past criminal behavior or their mental state? That you at least have to be 21 to buy an assault rifle? That there is a waiting period before giving them an instrument of death in the hope, the simple hope, that he will change his mind?

I'm pessimistic about this. Nothing will change. We live in the Wild West. Maybe the best thing to do is to demand that the National Rifle Association and the government install metal detectors in schools, in our public transportation, hospitals, theaters, stadiums. If I could, I'd have metal detectors at home.

In my home, close to me and my children, I want no guns.

Enough!