On ARs and Green Converse Sneakers
The House is finally discussing an assault weapons ban. It took long enough. As Michigan’s Congresswoman Haley Stevens put it today, “The AR-15 style weapons used in the mass shootings in Uvalde, Atlanta, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas, Buffalo, Orlando, Parkland, and Highland Park were ALL bought LEGALLY.”
While extreme gun rights advocates and NRA shills shrug their shoulders and say there is nothing we can do to stop the mass shootings in this country, that the problem lies in mental health, not in gun possession, the facts show otherwise. We had an assault weapons ban in this country, from 1994 to 2004, at which point the Republican-led Congress allowed it to lapse. Some claim the results of the ban were unclear, but there are plenty of sources available that show otherwise — during the decade the ban was in place, massacres by gunfire were less frequent and significantly less deadly than they have been since.
Other nations took fast action when mass shootings took the lives of their citizens. Scotland, Norway, New Zealand come to mind. There are others. In the U.S., we continue our hand-wringing, our “thoughts and prayers,” and our defiant defense of an outdated and intentionally misunderstood clause in the Constitution.
I listened recently to an emergency room physician on NPR describing the effect of an assault rifle attack on a human body. He apologized for the graphic nature of his words, as he spoke about the organs obliterated, bones shattered, bodies wrecked beyond recognition. These weapons, he said, were designed and intended for the battlefield, but ER doctors in the United States are now being asked to handle their results in suburban hospitals. These doctors, too, are the victims of the shootings. They are suffering, from the experience, from their inability to save the shooting victims, from the pain of being part of that horror.
It’s long past time our nation faces what we have wrought by being too afraid to stand up to the gun lobby. Citizens may indeed enjoy their right to own guns — hunting rifles, handguns for self-protection — but in our country today people are stockpiling weapons of war, weapons intended for far more nefarious purposes than bagging a buck during hunting season or warding off a home invader.
In most of my letters for this project I have appealed to my state representatives to back sensible gun safety laws, suggesting they start small, like supporting the bill currently dying a quiet death in committee that simply requires Michigan’s gun owners to safely store their weapons. As I near the end of the promised 21 letters — one for each of the victims in the May 24 Uvalde TX massacre — I can see I will keep writing. But my ask is going to get bigger. It is time to get assault rifles out of the hands of 18-year-olds, off our streets, away from our communities altogether.
Maite Yuleana Rodriguez was the little girl who wore green Converse sneakers. You may have seen her sneakers — when actor and Uvalde native Matthew McConaghey and his wife Camila visited DC lawmakers to discuss gun control measures in the wake of the school shooting, Camila carried a pair of green Converse shoes. In the aftermath of the shooting, amidst the confusion, the mayhem, the horribly assaulted bodies and the blood, a pair of green sneakers were the only clear and immediate evidence that Maite had been killed. Maite’s shoes were recognizable by their color and by the heart that Maite had drawn over the toe on the right shoe.
Maite had hoped to be a marine biologist one day. She dreamed of attending Texas A&M. She liked photography and sewing and chicken strips with jalapeño peppers. Now, because of a scholarship established in Maite’s honor, other students from Uvalde will get to study marine biology at A&M. But Maite will not even celebrate her 11th birthday.
We cannot accept these losses. They are too much. It is time to take action.