Kimberly Rubio broke down in tears as she described her 10-year-old daughter Lexi to a room full of lawmakers weighing tighter gun laws following the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, that took Lexi’s life along with 18 of her classmates and two teachers.
“We don’t want you to think of Lexi as just a number. She was intelligent, compassionate and athletic. She was quiet, shy unless she had a point to make,” Rubio said, crying next to her husband Felix at a hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee in June 2022.
Parents, law enforcement and one of Lexi’s classmates who survived that May 24 mass shooting testified before Congress about the Texas massacre as well as one in Buffalo, New York, last month that left a combined 31 Americans dead and horrified the nation as the latest examples of mass shootings carried out by lone teenage gunmen.
“We understand that for some reason, to some people – to people with money, to people who fund political campaigns – that guns are more important than children,” Rubio continued.
“Somewhere out there, there is a mom listening to our testimony thinking, ‘I can’t even imagine their pain,’ not knowing that our reality will someday be hers. Unless we act now.”
(Thomas Franck. “Parents of Uvalde, Buffalo shooting victims ask Congress for tighter gun laws ahead of key votes.” CNBC. June 08, 2022.)
During this same committee meeting, Zeneta Everhart, mother of 20-year-old survivor Zaire Goodman, detailed the injuries suffered by her son on May 14, when an 18-year-old gunman carried out a racist rampage at a supermarket in Buffalo.
“To the lawmakers who feel that we do not need stricter gun laws: Let me paint a picture for you,” Everhart said in her testimony. “My son Zaire has a hole in the right side of his neck, two on his back and another on his left leg caused by an exploding bullet” from an AR-15 assault rifle.
“I want you to picture that exact scenario for one of your children,” she continued. “This should not be your story or mine.”
Other witnesses included Uvalde pediatrician Dr. Roy Guerrero, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia and Amy Swearer of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Gramaglia praised retired Buffalo police officer Aaron Salter Jr., who shot – but was unable to stop – the 18-year-old gunman who used an AR-15 to kill 10 people in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo. Salter was among those shot to death.
“It is often said that a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun. Aaron was the good guy and was no match for what he went up against: A legal AR-15 with multiple high-capacity magazines” the Buffalo police commissioner told lawmakers.
“Assault weapons like the AR-15 are known for three things,” he continued, “how many rounds they fire, the speed at which they fire those rounds and body counts.”
(Thomas Franck. “Parents of Uvalde, Buffalo shooting victims ask Congress for tighter gun laws ahead of key votes.” CNBC. June 08, 2022.)
In Uvalde, more than a month after the massacre, marchers in the Unheard Voices March and Rally braved the sweltering weather, carrying signs that read “Remember Their Names” and chanting “Save Our Kids!”
Many of those who marched also want more than justice. Some families are pushing for stricter gun laws and background checks. But in a mostly rural and socially conservative county where gun culture is threaded into everyday life, and where many own guns for protection and hunting, gun control may prove an elusive goal, Mr. Cazares and others said.
Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-year-old daughter, Jackie, was killed in the shooting, said the seed for the rally was planted the day he stood over her body and made a vow that her death would not be in vain.
A U.S. veteran and longtime gun owner, Cazares once considered himself a staunch supporter of gun rights. But something in him changed since the tragedy, he said in an interview.
Mr. Cazares recalled in painful detail how he forgot his gun in his truck as he rushed to his daughter’s school the moment he heard there was a gunman inside. Once there, he said, he pleaded with armed officers to burst in and take on the gunman. He later learned that his daughter lay dead in a nearby hospital.
A preliminary law enforcement report suggested responding officers waited some 78 minutes to enter the classrooms where the gunman was terrorizing a teacher and children. Mr. Cazares said the memory of Jackie, whom he described as a “firecracker” who dreamed of one day visiting Paris, was what kept him motivated to get a full accounting and demand that the Uvalde school district bolster its security measures before the coming school year.
“I’m not afraid to speak my mind and will continue to do so, so these families know that they are not alone,” he said.
(Edgar Sandoval. “For Uvalde Families, a Call for Answers Grows Louder.” The New York Times. July 11, 2022.)
Bringing the View Back Home
The horror of these mass shootings and the need to address the epidemic of gun violence in the United States – it seems so clear … but not to those who resist much-needed reforms in the name of what they consider an infrangible Second Amendment. Our own Scioto County Commissioners have chosen to announce publicly such a dangerous political view during a meeting in July 2022.
Commissioner Bryan Davis recently stated …
“And what we need to do is make sure that if there is an armed assailant out there and he has a gun … you know what, it's all right to have one that's bigger than what he's got. And, you know what? It goes back to the founding of our country. The Founding Fathers showed great wisdom in the fact that the right to bears arms shall not be infringed. And that means no way, no how.”
(Facebook live cast. Scioto County Commissioners Meeting. July 7, 2022.)
Davis chooses to oversimplify the issue of gun violence by declaring “gun, rock, knife, whatever it is” – “if you really want to zero in on the big issue, it's sin. It's sin in the hearts of man. That's period. That's it. That's where it all goes.”
(Facebook live cast. Scioto County Commissioners Meeting. July 7, 2022.)
But how about “zeroing in” on the children that might be saved from these sins that dwell in the hearts of evil men? How about an 18-year-old's ability to purchase assault rifles or how about a mentally disturbed person's unlimited access to deadly firearms. Should we dismiss efforts to stop gun violence by simply resigning them to transgressions against divine law? Should we continue to ignore pleas to study research-based solutions simply because of some long-dried-out ink stains on a piece of parchment?
Let's study the tragedy of guns and children.
The U.S. stands out among high-income countries: Over 90% of all the firearm deaths among children and adolescents that occur in industrialized nations occur in this country.
(David Hemenway, PhD and Erin Grinshteyn. Violent Death Rates: The US Compared with Other High-income OECD Countries, 2010.” American Journal of Medicine. Volume 129, ISSUE 3, P266-273, March 01, 2016.)
Rates of death from firearms among ages 14 to 17 are now 22.5% higher than motor vehicle-related death rates. In the U.S., middle and high school age children are now more likely to die as the result of a firearm injury than from any other single cause of death.
For Americans between the ages of 1 and 19, a little over half of 2017 firearm-related deaths are homicides. Another 38% of firearm-related deaths in this age group are suicides, while the rest result from unintentional injuries or undetermined causes.
(“About Underlying Cause of Death, 1999-2020.” Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. 2022.)
A February 2018 study published in the journal Pediatrics found that as many as 44 percent of homes with children also had firearms. In those homes with guns, only 35 percent of parents or caretakers stored the weapons according to American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations that they be unloaded and locked in a safe. The gun storage responses were similar, regardless of whether a child in the home had a mental illness, such as depression, which is a risk factor for suicide.
(John Scott, BS; Deborah Azrael, PhD; Matthew Miller, MD. “Firearm Storage in Homes With Children With Self-Harm Risk Factors.” Pediatrics. Volume 141, Issue 3. March 2018.)
89 percent of unintentional shooting deaths of children take place in the home, when children are playing with a loaded gun while their parents are out. American children are 9 times more likely to be killed by a gun than are kids in other developed nations.
A RAND Corporation study showed that about 1.4 million households (with an estimated 2.6 million children) had firearms stored unlocked and either loaded or with ammunition nearby.
Dr. Rebecca Cunningham, Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School and lead author of a study on death among young people featured in the New England Journal of Medicine told Newsweek (2017) …
"Firearm deaths are preventable deaths. They are not 'too complex,' and the problem is not too difficult to tackle," she argued. "Scientists have tackled problems as or more complex for ages." This can be achieved by "respecting the rights and culture of our U.S. citizens," she said.
"This is not a topic that we in medicine or emergency medicine can simply look away and not see because it is so uncomfortable or political. It is there every day in hospitals across the country," she said.
In an article accompanying the study, Dr. Edward W. Campion, the online editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and former Chief of the Geriatrics Unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, wrote:
"Children in America are dying or being killed at rates that are shameful. The sad fact is that a child or adolescent in the United States is 57 percent more likely to die by the age of 19 years than those in other wealthy nations.”
"Car crashes and lethal gunshots are not random results of fate," he continued. "Both individuals and the larger society need to understand that there is much that can be done to reduce the rate of fatal trauma."
(Kashmira Gander. “U.S. Child Gun Deaths: Firearms Are Second Biggest Killer in America.” Newsweek. December 19, 2018.)
Conclusion
What difference can we make in stopping gun violence when local leaders refuse to accept facts and address real reasons for the death of our children by the gun? Not only mass shootings but also many other firearm tragedies are preventable – but only in the eyes of those open to Second Amendment reform. Children die every day. Accidental shootings and suicides are alarmingly common – and both are part of the gun violence epidemic we must address.
No one should have the right to usurp the loss of Zeneta Everhart or Javier Cazares by simply stating “the Second Amendment must not be infringed.”
Illegal guns should be America’s No. 1 public-safety concern, and new laws are badly needed to eventually curb the violence they allow. But it is unacceptable that legal guns continue to be nearly as deadly as illegal guns when responsible firearm ownership is what is needed to prevent many of those deaths.
And, the really sad reality is that many local FOP members, armed services veterans, and liberal politicians now trapped in a disadvantageous minority status – all of whom know better – have succumbed to indifference. The gun culture and its subsequent gun worship in Scioto County offers blanket protection for any and everybody to keep and bear arms. They know better but dare not offer solutions of reform. Money, power, and politics? The malignancy spreads through very questionable means.
For God's sake, if you truly believe it is the evil in the hearts of men that causes all of the gun death and destruction, you must be comfortable in ignoring the slaughter of the very young, and accepting their tragic deaths as expendable casualties in a violent conflict over gun rights. So very often the readily available firearm – in its many deadly forms – is the means to both evil and accident, innocent victims … children … lay in the wake.
I'm sure by now the country commissioners are tired of my so-called “fodder” on this blog. They are ready to move along, denounce my views, and let time and fate determine the future of their proud Second Amendment Sanctuary. Wrapping themselves in Founding Fathers and religion, they believe in their unassailable, God-given right to firearms. They remain in office and thus in power – a fact proudly professed by Mr. Davis when denigrating our petition to rescind the sanctuary designation in light of mental health and substance abuse problems in the area.
My message to the reader is this: denial and simple relegation of cause and effect will not solve this complex problem of gun violence. If you dare to tell the parents in Uvalde or in Buffalo this, you will likely be met with the all-very-true stiff opposition of firsthand experience.
How Dare You?
How dare you
Take my simple question
And use it
To make me …
The foolish instigator
The slippery slope
The Godless voice
The sower of evil
My fingers are not …
Wrapped around the trigger of an AR-15
Or holding onto a senseless declaration
Or pointing out political power and reckless resistance
My heart and mind are not …
Full of judgment and contempt
Narrow to a fault
And closed to understanding
My eyes are not …
Clouded by nationalistic fears
Smarting from indecision
Or closed to the continuing bloodshed
Instead, my pen will continue …
To beg for answers
To offer you a conscience
And, to speak for
Victims of the 314 mass shootings
In the U.S. so far in 2022.
Meanwhile, you will sit and continue …
To Laugh
And to make
Ignorant comparisons
To deaths by baseball bats
I now ask …
Where Is
The Evil
In the Hearts
Of What “Good Men”?
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