By
Jill Nelson
MSNBC
CONTRIBUTOR
April
24 — The
shootings Tuesday in Littleton, Colo., are just the latest in a series
of acts of mass violence by young people in suburban and rural schools.
I wish I could say I was shocked by the latest murders, but I wasn’t. Horrified,
repulsed, enraged, definitely. But unfortunately violence in our schools
— urban, suburban and rural — is nothing new. The only thing that changes
is the steadily increasing number of people who are killed. As far I can
see, the area where surprise remains possible is in our response to guns
and violence.
Let’s tell the gun lovers and gun manufacturers we refuse to allow them into our communities to peddle instruments of death.
INSTEAD OF NUMBING ourselves watching televised images of grieving families,
chorus lines of speculating pundits, and ad nauseum replays of the most
graphic and disturbing videotape, I say it’s time to come together across
communities, collectivize our confusion, rage and pain, and aim it straight
at the heart of the National Rifle Association and the gun manufacturers.
We will probably never understand why Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went
on a berserk murder spree at their high school. We will never know the
terror their victims felt moments before they were shot. There will never
be any way of telling what these people might have accomplished had they
lived. The only thing we do know for sure is that guns killed 15 people
and wounded 24 more. I think it’s time to tell the gun lovers and gun manufacturers
we refuse to allow them into our communities to peddle instruments of death
any more.
TEACH THEM A LESSON
This ain’t the wild frontier, it’s America at the millennium. It’s more important for the rest of us to feel safe than to perpetuate your retro gun-toting fantasies.
The National Rifle Association plans to hold its convention this weekend
in Denver, seven miles from Littleton. In the wake of the shootings, they
have scaled down their event, but even so, a meeting of this sort is absolutely
unacceptable. The people of Colorado and this nation shouldn’t stand for
it. A fitting memorial to those killed in Littleton and all over this country
by senseless gun violence would be to refuse to let the NRA into Colorado
or any place else that understands the devastating effects of guns and
the violence they amplify and aggrandize.
All of us who are outraged should turn our grief into action. Bombard the
NRA with letters and e-mail telling them not to come to Colorado. Form
a human chain around the airport; do not let eager NRA conventioneers into
the city of Denver. Whatever hotel they’re holding their convention in
should cancel the organization’s reservation, tell the NRA we don’t want
you in our hotel, our town, our lives or our deaths. Whatever entertainers
have been booked should refuse to entertain them, and those contracted
to provide goods and services should decline to do so.
News media should publish the names of every person and business that turns
their backs on NRA and munitions money, who disdained to profit from those
who purvey instruments of death. Those of us who believe that this is the
moment to say “enough is enough” should tack that list to our refrigerators
and take our business to them whenever possible.
GIVE UP THE OLD
ARGUMENTS
Don’t even start with the tired argument that guns don’t kill people, people
do. The fact is that if Harris and Klebold had not had guns the nation
wouldn’t be talking about them now. Don’t even try and evoke the Constitution
and the rationale that the founding fathers in their perfection wanted
us to have guns. They also were willing to profit from and perpetuate slavery,
but we managed to figure out that wasn’t right, didn’t we?
As for you folks who think hunting and shooting animals with your very
own gun is some God-given right, get over it. If you must hunt, why not
do it in a controlled environment where you rent a gun for hunting in a
specified area and return it when you’re finished? And finally, for all
you king-of-the-wild-frontier types out there, grow up. This ain’t the
wild frontier, it’s America at the millennium, and frankly it’s more important
for the rest of us to feel safe when we send our children to school and
walk the streets than to perpetuate your retro fantasy. If that means bursting
your macho bubble, so be it and welcome to the real, violent world.
Great changes are often made by ordinary people in moments of crisis taking
extraordinary action. This is such a moment. Instead of passively pondering,
soul-searching, and pontificating, let’s take action. Refuse to let the
NRA meet in Colorado or any other of these United States. Put the arms
manufacturers on notice that we are tired of their studied detachment,
their disingenuous excuse that hey, we just make the weapons, we’re not
responsible for how people use them.
Rosa Parks was just one tired woman after a long day at work when she refused
to give her seat to a white man on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in
1955. An ordinary woman driven by circumstances to an extraordinary action,
one that touched other people and sparked the civil rights movement.
I’m convinced we all have some Rosa Parks in us. Surely we don’t have to
wait for the next act of gun violence to find it.
Jill Nelson is
a journalist and the author of “Straight, No Chaser: How I Became a Grown-up
Black Woman.” She is a regular contributor to MSNBC on the Internet.