Another kid brought a gun to school yesterday.

Let me repeat that. Another kid brought a fucking gun to school yesterday!

This time it was fifteen-year-old Ethan Crumbley who walked into Michigan’s Oxford High School and started shooting.

You already know the horrible details. You can imagine the nightmare that unfolded. The sounds, the fear, the scars that will remain forever in the minds of the students and teachers who lived through those terrifying minutes, many of them hiding in their classrooms, the doors locked and barricaded with desks piled up against them to keep the shooter from getting in. You can read about every traumatizing second in the news — because it’s everywhere today, sadly.

And sadly, it’s being talked about in the same tragic way as all the other school shootings that came before it.

Once again, we’re in disbelief.

Once again, we’re in shock that another shooting has occurred.

Once again, we’re unable to get our collective head around the hugely inconceivable notion that another kid has been allowed to sneak a gun into another school to kill more kids.

Once again, we are here.

School shootings like yesterday’s tragedy have happened more times in this country than anywhere else on the planet. Red Lake, UT, Virginia Tech, Oikos University, Columbine High School. Hell, the anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting is this month — just 13 days from now.

This is a systemic problem that is uniquely American.

And yet, as we face it again, we’re gripped by disbelief that another troubled kid out there would do this horribly senseless thing.

What’s unbelievable isn’t that it’s happened again, but rather that Ethan Crumbley is protected by his rights. His right to remain silent. His right to lawyer up. His right to be treated fairly.

What about the four kids he killed yesterday who wanted to exercise their right to live? To play football. To attend college. To get married. Find a job. Have a family. Grow old. To live … and one day die naturally!

What about the parents of those poor, innocent kids who want to exercise their right to know why their children will never, ever, ever be coming home?

What about the other victims who will never be the same? What about their rights to never be part of this senselessly repetitive narrative that our gun-loving country can’t seem to rid itself of?

No, we’re not defending their rights right now.

But Ethan’s Crumbley’s rights? They’re protected by laws that are as backward as the rules that allowed his father to buy the very gun used in the shooting — just four short days ago!

Think about it.

Just four days ago, Ethan Crumbley didn’t have the tools he needed to carry out his plan. No gun. No bullets. No means to do the unthinkable.

Just four days ago, four beautiful human beings — each one with untapped potential to add to this world in ways we will never know — were living their lives fully.

Just four days ago, the world had one less gun-related tragedy in it to remind us of how dangerous these killing machines can be when they wind up in the wrong hands — and how the laws governing them must change. NOW!

Just four days ago … Ethan’s father exercised his right as an American and walked into a store and, just like that, bought a handgun … with multiple magazines … each filled with countless bullets. And then, just like that, his fifteen-year-old son had an entire arsenal within reach to carry out his sick plan.

Easy fucking peasy lemon fucking squeezy.

And now, because our gun laws have been designed to protect the freedoms of gun-loving lunatics like Ethan and his dad, everything about life has forever changed for so many innocent people in Michigan — just like before, in other parts of the country where other senseless shootings like this one have occurred.

Once again, we are here.

And Ethan Crumbley has rights!?!

Ethan Crumbley can pick and choose when he fills us in on his demented plan to cause death and pain?

Ethan Crumbley gets to walk away from the nightmare he created and keep on living, regardless of how horribly dark his life is about to get?

Ethan Crumbley has fucking rights?

Come on!

If you ask me, he forfeited his right to be treated fairly the second he fired that gun. He gave up his right to be shown mercy the second each of his bullets took a life. He lost his right to be seen as a human being the second he turned his back on humanity and became a monster.

If you ask me, the very second fifteen-year-old Ethan pulled the trigger was the very moment he should have lost every God-given right he’s ever enjoyed as a free man. Even if he is just a boy.

Maybe you don’t agree.

Maybe you think we should give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you’re saying we shouldn’t condemn him until we’ve heard his side of the story.

Maybe.

But if you ask me, he’s lost that right, too.

But you’re not asking me. I get it.

So then … ask them.

Ask the four innocent kids Ethan Crumbley killed with his rights yesterday.

Ask Hana St. Juliana, 14.

Ask Madisyn Baldwin, 17.

Ask Tate Myre, 16.

Aks Justin Shilling, 17.

I suspect that if any of them could speak for themselves right now, they’d all say the same thing: Fuck Ethan Crumbley’s rights.

But we can’t ask them, can we? No, Ethan saw to that.

And to be clear, not for a second is it lost on me that I’m talking about a fifteen-year-old boy here. That in itself is a tragedy. Because our gun laws failed to protect Ethan from himself. We all failed him. And now that boy — possibly full of as much potential as all his victims — is lost. We all lose in this scenario. All of us.

Because until we stop giving people like Ethan Crumbley’s dad the right to bear arms in this country, and until we can stop troubled kids like Ethan from getting their hands on those weapons of destruction, we will never break this cycle.

More Ethan Crumbleys will cause more pain and death in more schools in America. And the rights of our children to live freely, without the fear of a shooter entering their school … will never be realized.

So I’ll continue to exercise my rights to speak up about this — and to fight to change it.

Maybe you should, too.

Maybe we all should.

Because the time to rethink this country’s broken gun laws is now.

Not next week!

Not next year!

NOW!

Before any more of our kids lose their right to live … just because they went to school that day.

Learn what you can do to take action. Change starts here: https://bit.ly/2ZPPRiv