Just write.

The wreckage is such that it's hard to feel like saying anything is worth the words. Except that I wish there were something I could say, something I could threaten to withhold, some enactment, some words, some display, some theater, that would change it. All there is are the things that seem so paltry: write, email, call, connect. Just keep saying it. Just keep saying, we need meaningful gun control. Control, some system of controls.

This.
This.
This.


To the Honorable Representative Love, Senator Hatch, Senator Lee:

I am writing to express as clearly as I can my strong belief that we must:

1. establish universal background checks for people who want to purchase guns
2. establish much more serious and meaningful gun control efforts
3. allow the CDC to research the most effective kinds of gun control.

The gun lobby is a pernicious influence on policy related to gun violence in this country. It is unacceptable--it has never been acceptable, but it grows more intolerable by the day--that we allow, by our cynical indifference, mass gun violence to be perpetrated.

Please do not write and tell me that the second amendment protects the rights of individual people to own guns. Please do not write and tell me that the fetishization of the gun is what makes America America. Instead, please write to me and tell me that you are willing to do what is hard and courageous, and work on fixing this terrible failure of public policy. We can effectively end most gun violence by doing some fairly straightforward things. Other countries have done so. Please work on doing these sensible things, I beg you.

Lisa Bickmore
West Jordan