Innocent children and teens are being gunned down. Here’s a suggestion for our country

A car stopped on a Kansas City, Kansas, street. Masked men got out and fired weapons toward a house, then drove away. This happened in the last few minutes of 6-year-old Sir’Antonio Brown’s life.

Life over for the boy, who was standing in his front yard.

I would ask every elected official in this country to put their children and grandchildren in that front yard and record what they are feeling when a random car drives past. We should all feel this vulnerability.

Why? Because this is our normal. Not new, just normal.

My daughter, who teaches in New Orleans, told me an elementary school student was recently stopped from carrying a parent’s gun into the building. Later the same day, a man was shot to death in a fast food parking lot down the street from her school. During the police investigation of the crime scene, a student attempted to cross the bloody parking lot on the way home, seemingly unaware that anything was different that day, or perhaps accustomed to the scene.

It happens everywhere and all the time. That is not a sensationalized statement. We, as a country, are allowing our children to be killed.

According to the Pew Research Center, the main cause of death of children and teens in 2021 in this country was homicide by guns. And that statistic is not improving.

All officials elected to either national or state office are approached by the NRA upon their first hours in office, strong-armed to sign onto its quest to support an amendment that they have interpreted as gospel. If officials don’t sign on, or show reluctance to, they are threatened with losing re-election by being “primaried,” which means the NRA funds someone who will.

Nearly anyone can own a gun, whether or not they are trained to use it. States are dropping training, licensing and laws in order to render us defined by gun culture.

The previous occupant of the White House encouraged his armed followers into his rally on January 6, 2021, because he “knew they weren’t there to hurt him.” This is how blind we are to the dangers of widespread gun possession. Even though they didn’t shoot former president Trump, there was plenty of violence committed by gun carriers that day.

Easing gun regulation confirms that we don’t want to discuss it anymore. We don’t understand or trust each other, and we’re becoming paranoid.

How is killing a little boy playing in his yard in broad daylight a winning argument for “everyone who wants a gun gets a gun”? We’re entrenched in this madness, and we’ve elected the inmates to run the asylum.

How about shooting a Black teenager who rings a doorbell? That white shooter claims he was “scared to death.” As a white woman who has survived having my doorbell rung by Black teenagers over the years, I think he manufactured “fear” out of alarmist ignorance. Was his gun locked away and unloaded? Or was it by the door, waiting for a Black caller?

If the NRA continues to promote lies about gun rights, and ignores my right not to be shot, they should be defunded, disbanded and prosecuted for promoting falsehoods. Like the insurgents on January 6, 2021, they claim they are taking something back, when, in fact, nothing was ever taken from them.

The Brown family did have something taken away from them. An innocent child.

Contact Ellen Murphy at murphysister04@gmail.com