I thought I had heard, read and seen all the graphic and horrifying descriptions of the Uvalde school carnage.
All the heartrending and harrowing stories and pleas by the surviving children, many of whom will endure long term physical and mental trauma.
All the cries of desperation and anguish of the parents. All the thoughts and prayers – sincere and “pro-forma” — and both the earnest pleas and hypocritical claptrap by politicians and others.
Such as the 10-year-old who made the chilling 911 call pleading with the police dispatcher, “There is a lot of bodies,” and “I don’t want to die, my teacher is dead, my teacher is dead, please send help, send help for my teacher, she is shot but still alive…” A call that was never relayed to the responding officers.
Or like the 11-year-old fourth grader who smeared herself in her murdered friend’s blood and pretended to be dead so she would not be shot and killed.
Consider the third grader whose three friends died that day and who now “sits quietly on his couch most of the time, staring off into space.” A little eight-year-old who may be suffering from survivor’s guilt and asks, “I don’t know why he decided to kill my friends.” A little boy who does not want to go back to school in the fall because he is afraid “they will kill [him].”
How about the mother of a 9-year-old who survived the massacre, but who is now too terrified to continue sending him to school in the U.S. “I will not sleep. I can never sleep thinking of this. When I close my eyes, I will think of these children, and I will think of my son and I will not sleep. It will be too hard,” she says.
Have you heard of the Texas casket maker who designed and customized 19 special caskets for the young victims, including one painted a glossy blue and with the red and yellow shield of the little boy’s Superman hero?
I also read about the manufacturer of AR-15-style rifles, who — just days before the Uvalde massacre — had “posted online an advertising photo of a toddler holding one of its AR-15-style rifles.” Then, after the Uvalde massacre, issued a statement offering the families of the young Uvalde victims, you guessed it, “our thoughts and our prayers.”
Then there is the U.S. Senator who took to the floor of the Senate and implored – “shamed” is a better word – his fellow lawmakers:
Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate? Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job, of putting yourself in a position of authority? If your answer is that as this slaughter increases as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing — what are we doing? Why are you here if not to solve a problem as existential as this?…What are we doing?…Our kids are living in fear every single time they set foot in the classroom because they think they’re going to be next. What are we doing?
But I also read about politicians, groups and organizations who callously call on their followers to: Stay cool. Run out the clock. Change the topic. Talk inflation, talk gun confiscation. Let this news cycle run its course Above all, don’t worry: this moment will soon pass. Talk anything else. Blame anything else. One Republican lawmaker simply blamed gun violence on abortion. Another politician blames gun violence on “Black People. Frankly.”
Yes, I thought I had heard, read and seen it all, until I heard Representative Eric Swalwell plead with his Republican colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee to pass rudimentary, common-sense gun control legislation. Behind him, as he spoke, were the images of the children whose lives were so cruelly cut short by AR-15 bullets.
Swalwell passionately asked his fellow Republicans, “Nineteen kids are dead. Nineteen children are dead, so to my Republican colleagues, I ask: Who are you here for? Are you here for our kids or are you here for the killers?
The answer became unmistakably clear when “every Republican on the Committee, led by Ranking Member Jim Jordan on the House Judiciary Committee, voted against HR 7910,” known as “Protecting Our Kids Act.”
However, what sent chills down my spine and brought tears to my eyes was Swalwell’s recounting of what a 6-year-old San Francisco Bay area girl asked her mother after seeing images of the murdered children.
“Mom, what picture are you going to use for me?” asked the six-year-old.
The passionate pleas by Rep. Swalwell did not convince a single Republican on the Committee to support common sense gun legislation.
On Wednesday, the 11-year-old girl who smeared herself with her murdered friend’s blood to survive will testify about gun violence before the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
Will Republican hearts, souls and consciences be stirred by the child’s harrowing testimony?
Will NRA money and influence finally hit a dry hole?
Sadly, the odds are not in the children’s favor.
