OPINION: Heed the call for common-sense gun law reforms

Last night, I listened to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” composed in 1963 during the civil rights and anti-war movements. Nearly 60 years later, that anthem of protest still rings true, particularly in light of gun violence in America and the recent mass shootings:

“Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don’t stand in the doorway

Don’t block up the hall...”

In April 1999, I visited elementary schools as a guest Alaska author in Ohio. In my hotel room, the shocking, gut-wrenching news about the Columbine High School mass shooting brought me to tears. That night, our hearts broke for the 15 young lives lost and 21 wounded in Colorado. We were riveted and in disbelief that something so horrific could happen in this country. The next day, it was difficult to walk into school and speak to 500 innocent children. We had a moment of silence. I carried on with my Alaska presentations, but could not stop thinking about Columbine.

Certainly, I thought then, that such a horrific act in a public school, a massacre of young people, must never happen again. Could never happen again.

In the 20 years that followed, I continued to visit schools in 23 different states. One middle-grade school near Columbine installed a metal detector, checking the backpacks and purses of every student, teacher and visitor. Countless schools redesigned the entrances to their buildings, at great expense, so that there was one entry/exit point, double doors secured. More security guards appeared at the door. I participated in a number of “active shooter” drills, and witnessed how hard principals work to keep their students and teachers safe.

With all those preventive measures since Columbine, the unthinkable happened. Devastating mass shootings still occur in schools and our hearts are beyond broken: Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary, Umpqua Community College, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Santa Fe High School and Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The Washington Post tracks shootings and reports that more than 311,000 children in 331 schools have experienced acts of gun violence since Columbine.

Our country is out of control with easy access to guns, particularly assault rifles and high-capacity magazines that kill six times as many people in mass shootings as compared to other guns used. Every state, including Alaska with five incidents, has experienced one or more school mass shootings.

While schools work to keep their students safe, organizations such as Sandy Hook Promise, Everytown for Gun Safety, Giffords, and the Brady Campaign have tirelessly advocated for gun violence prevention programs and legislation. While there are success stories in some states, such as Massachusetts and Oregon, two states that require safe gun storage with a locking device, or Florida, where the state legislature raised the age from 18 to 21 to legally purchase an assault weapon, Congress has not enacted any meaningful laws or gun access restrictions to make our nation safer from gun violence and mass shootings.

Apparently guns are more important than our children’s lives, even though the leading cause of death for children in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was a bullet. This is more than disturbing. This is shameful.

If Congress had renewed the federal ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines in 2004, the 18-year-old shooter in Uvalde would not have been able to legally purchase the gun and magazines that killed 19 children and two adults.

There is no easy answer or quick fix to gun violence in America. But as a nation, we should have the courage to take assault weapons and large capacity magazines off the market. No civilian, and no hunter in Alaska, needs these weapons of war, or the magazines that can destroy a whole a classroom of innocent children in the blink of an eye.

Will Congress “heed the call” and pass common sense gun reforms, or will the same Republicans continue to “block the hall” with their blind allegiance to the NRA? We can only hope that Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan break their silence and do the right thing in the name of public safety and for the sake of our precious children.

Call them. Write them. Until they do.

Debbie S. Miller is an Alaska author of many nature books for children and adults. She lives in Sitka.

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