As a father, my heart bleeds for the parents who sent their young sons and daughters off to school on Friday morning, never to see the wonderment in their children's eyes again, never to see their dreams realized.
As a lawyer, I try to reconcile Americans' constitutional right to keep and bear arms with the ever-increasing number of crimes involving guns, particularly those that claim random lives like those in Newtown, Columbine and at Virginia Tech, to name just a few - a few too many.
As I spent a couple hours yesterday morning driving to a meeting in northern New Jersey, I was flipping around the radio dial. Reporters talked about the New York Stock Exchange observing a moment of silence, that "Saturday Night Live" opened its most recent show with a youth choir singing "Silent Night." This just made me sadder.
Then, I heard a report about an anonymous donor who, over the weekend, funded a gun buyback event in San Francisco and Oakland that took more than 600 guns off the streets - guns that surely weren't going to be used for sport. No doubt at least one child's life would be saved as a result. That someone with the financial means was willing to enact a gun-control measure of sorts was a welcome sliver of holiday cheer. I can only hope that those with political means are willing to take similar action.
No comments: