Letter: We need to eliminate that evil voice

Posted 2/21/18

To the editor:

Last Thursday night, I walked into Bluewater Grill for our family Valentine’s Day dinner and gave my daughter a long hug. She is only 6 and a half and didn’t know what …

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Letter: We need to eliminate that evil voice

Posted

To the editor:

Last Thursday night, I walked into Bluewater Grill for our family Valentine’s Day dinner and gave my daughter a long hug. She is only 6 and a half and didn’t know what had happened in Parkland, Fla., that day, but I did. I knew about Parkland and Columbine and Newtown and Las Vegas and churches in South Carolina and Texas and a nightclub in Orlando.

It’s because I know of these things that I hear a dark, evil voice whispering to me every time I kiss La Munchipessa and tell her I love her before school. The voice asks me if today is the day that something happens, our world comes apart, a gun goes off.

I hate that voice.

I hate the fear I feel and the idea that I’ll have to explain all of this to her someday.

I hate that my daughter is growing up in a country where mass shootings are the new normal. 

I hate that the right to carry guns designed solely for the purposes of killing other people has trumped the right for children to go to school without having to practice lockdown drills.

I hate that children were texting their parents and siblings to say “I love you” because they didn’t think they would ever be able to say it in person again.

I hate that parents who sent their children to school are now sitting in empty bedrooms staring at photos and videos and tennis rackets and Playstations and dirty soccer jerseys, knowing they'll never be able to hold their child one more time.

I hate that voice.

I wonder why the politicians and enablers of the gun lobby can’t hear it. Many of them have kids or grandkids. Does the voice not whisper the fear to them, too? Maybe it does but the sound of a Glock sliding into a holster, a magazine being inserted into an AR-15, and the clink of golden guineas in their re-election coffers drowns it out.

I hate that voice.

But I am stronger than that voice. 

I love my daughter and my nieces and my young cousins and the children of my friends and family.

That's why I know we can be stronger than the guns. We need our voices to grow ever louder so that no parent has to hear that evil whisper, that dark voice, while standing at the door to the school ever again.

Chris Watson

Barrington

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