More Bullets. More Innocence Lost.
It happened again!
Another mass shooting in another school robbed another community of its innocence.
By now, you’ve read the news.
It’s all too familiar.
Babies killed.
Families torn apart.
Another town in America changed forever.
And yet, as surprised as I should be, want to be, need to be … sadly, I’m not. No one should be. Because we all knew this would happen again. We’ve all been waiting for it. And we all knew it’d be the same as all the other times before it.
Same senselessness.
Same nightmare.
Same reaction from our political leaders.
“Thoughts and prayers.”
Another lone wolf — Salvador Ramos, 18 — walks into an elementary school with an arsenal of automatic weapons that he was able to quickly, freely buy, and all we hear from the leaders of this country is, “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the victims.”
That’s what Layla Salazar, Rojelio Torres, Layla Salazar, and the other nineteen children killed on Tuesday get?
“Thoughts and prayers!?!”
That’s what the families left behind to pick up the pieces get?
“Thoughts and prayers!?!”
This mass shooting could’ve been prevented. This misguided gun-wielding eighteen-year-old boy could have been stopped from killing 19 kids and two teachers. 21 beautiful human beings full of hopes and dreams and possibilities we will never see realized.
None of them had to die on Tuesday. None of them had to become part of the staggering statistics around gun violence in America. None of them!
But then there are many in America who would argue that it was Salvador Ramos’s right to own a gun. And not just any gun. A semi-automatic “assault” rifle. Two of them. Two rifles, both with the word “assault” in the name?
The word alone should’ve raised suspicion. It should’ve sounded the alarm. The word “assault” on the bill of sale for those two guns should’ve forced a background check. We should’ve known who the second Amendment-touting American behind those guns was — and what he intended to do with them.
Sadly, we now know what that background check could’ve helped tell us. And now we know more pain because of another senseless, insane, and preventable mass shooting in a school.
And yet, even after Ramos got his hands on those guns, we still could’ve stopped him. Because once he had his two semi-automatic “assault” rifles, he still needed the one thing that would turn those guns into killing machines: Bullets.
To carry out his demented plan, he needed lots of bullets. And he got them. As easily as you can order a pair of sneakers from Amazon.
Just like the shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, had amassed more than 1,700 rounds of ammunition before entering the building and killing 27 people.
Just like the two shooters at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, fired188 rounds of ammunition in less than an hour, killing 13 people.
The shooter on Tuesday walked into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, with 375 rounds of ammunition that he purchased online on May 18. Not a question asked. Not an eyebrow raised. Nothing done. And now 21 human beings have lost their lives because 21 easy-to-obtain bullets found them.
Since 1999, there have been fourteen mass shootings in schools across America. And in each case, the shooters amassed large stockpiles of ammunition before committing their horrific crimes.
They basically had all the bullets they needed to kill.
And kill they did.
169 innocent lives to be exact.
These weren’t statistics.
These were kids. Little boys and girls. Sons and daughters. Brothers and sisters.
These were teachers. Moms and dads. Husbands and wives.
All of them were loved. All of them will be forever mourned. All of them never imagined that on Tuesday there would be a bullet with their name on it … waiting for them at school.
Because it was a bullet, not a gun, that ended Nevaeh Bravo’s dream of being the first to inhabit Mars.
It was a bullet, not a gun, that took away Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez’s chance to one day be the president of the United States.
It was a bullet, not a gun, that took away Irma Garcia’s wish to see her superstar students graduate and continue to shine in life.
Because it’s the bullet, not the gun, that kills.
Think about it. A gun is nothing but a useless hunk of plastic and metal without a bullet. It’s the bullet that makes the gun deadly. It’s the bullet that’s propelled from the gun at a life-altering velocity. It’s the bullet, not the gun, that rips through the body and takes the most precious of all things away from us.
And as of Tuesday, 169 bullets have successfully lived up to their potential.
While processing the news of yet another mass shooting in an American school, I revisited a piece I wrote almost five years ago about the mass shooting in Los Vegas. In it, I proposed the need for something more than just gun control. Because let’s be real, we know we can’t outlaw guns. So we need to find a different way. One that creates different behavior.
We need to change the way we approach the problem of gun control. Because we seem to have lost all control when it comes to this issue.
So what’s the solution?
I’m not sure it’s as easy as that. It’s going to take a massive effort. A lot of smart people working together to fix this problem. We need new ways of thinking about it. Better ways to talk about it. Bigger, more modern ideas to fix it. We need to act on it. Now!
So here’s one idea: Bullet control.
Once you consider how useless a gun is without bullets, controlling the sale of bullets seems like a no-brainer to controlling the insanity we’re seeing happening in our schools.
Bullet control would help regulate what right now is a wildly unregulated industry that basically sells ammunition to anyone — regardless of age or background, criminal record or not. All you have to do is go online, choose your bullets, and buy them. Click, ship, bang bang!
Bullet control would allow us to influence gun control. Because it would allow us to implement an additional layer of background checks, delaying the sale of ammunition until the person is properly vetted.
Bullet control would limit the amount of ammunition a person can buy, assigning a serial number to every bullet sold and matching it with the gun-loving America who purchased it. Maybe we limit the amount of ammunition a gun owner can purchase each month. Maybe we create a “no stockpiling” law — which is regulated by way of the serial-number system.
You want to own a gun, now you’re assigned a serial number, and every bullet you use — for every hunting trip, every target practice, everything — will be recorded on your file.
This is not a difficult thing to do. Think back to your library card. You’re limited to the number of books you can check out. Same with your Netflix DVD collection (if you can remember that far back). Same with lots of programs where tabs are kept on people using the product and regulating the amount they can use at one time.
Bullet control would help us gain control.
The problem is … the NRA-backed Washington DC politicians can’t afford to lose any of that control. Just look at the fifty US Senators holding up passing the MR8 Bill.
A bill that, if it existed six days ago, may have prevented Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary School from happening.
A bill that, if passed soon, could prevent the 15th mass shooting in an American school from happening.
A bill that, if those fifty US Senators can put the safety of our children first — before the power of their politics — could save us all a lot of future pain.
But we need action. Now!
And while a call for stricter gun control is needed, including universal background checks, we can do more.
We have to do more.
This is why I call for bullet control.
Control the bullets, and we can stop the fear our children have of being gunned down in school.
Control the bullets, and we can stop burying our kids, our teachers, our loved ones because they decided to go to school that day.
Control the bullets, and we can stop the madness.
Until then, more innocence in America’s classrooms will be lost and added to a horribly long list that leaves us feeling hopelessly helpless — offering those poor families left behind with the only words we can think of in this all-too-familiar moment.
Thoughts and prayers.
To all the innocence lost on Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, rest in peace.
Xavier Lopez, 10
Uziyah Garcia, 10
Tess Marie Mata
Rojelio Torres, 10
Nevaeh Bravo
Miranda Mathis, 11
Maite Rodriguez
Makenna Lee Elrod, 10
Layla Salazar, 10
Jose Flores, 10
Jayce Luevanos, 10
Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10
Jackie Cazares, 10
Eliana “Ellie” Garcia, 9
Eliahana Cruz Torres, 10
Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10
Amerie Jo Garza, 10
Alithia Ramirez, 10
Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, 10
And let’s not forget their teachers
Irma Garcia
Eva Mireles, 44