She attended college to better herself, at 39 she wanted her days at low paying jobs to end and felt nursing not only provided a path to better prosperity for her and her child, but she would also be able to give back to those that needed help.
Today at school as she lay prone on the floor she was asked to stand and state her religion. She stumbled as she climbed to her feet trying to keep her hands behind her head as ordered. She didn’t understand the question as simply asked “What?”.
The sound of a gun at close range is loud and immediate, she would barely have had time to register what it was before a bullet pierced her skull and she slumped back to the floor dead.
Her last view would have been at that gun pointing at her, that gun that was protected by the 2nd amendment even if she wasn’t.
She had heard the arguments over this amendment, but had ignored them. She couldn’t afford a gun and like most simply hoped the day would never come that she would even have to think about one. That day did come, and she didn’t have a vote.
I hope those that followed her, that the end was speedy and painless. I have never been shot but I have had a loaded gun pointed at me. I can attest it was the single most fearful moment of my life even more than being diagnosed with Cancer. I can only imagine what the victims in Oregon felt.
This is not what it’s supposed to be like in the USA, where people are afforded in the Declaration of Independence “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”, I am not sure how those strong and motivating words fit in the barrel of gun.
Statistics will flow from both sides in the debate and this will become a political hot potato as it was when 26 young children were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary school in 2012, the one set of numbers however that stands out to me is this is the 45th shooting at a school in 2015 and the 142nd shooting since the massacre at Sandy Hook less than 3 years ago.
Defenders of guns will say any legislation against gun ownership will only affect law abiding citizens. I have looked back at the spate of these mass shootings, the vast majority of these mass murderers did not have criminal records, there were as the gun proponents say law abiding citizens until they took a gun and became a bad guy.
We are less one future nurse tonight, and a child is motherless. More are dead and wounded.
But the debate will fall back again on who has the right to own a gun instead of who has the right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”.
