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Slim Smith

On Aug. 2, 2019, I became a member of a club no one ever wants to join.

Thats the day my daughter, Abby, was killed in a car crash in Texas. At 27, she was a young woman, but she was, of course, still my little girl.

In a variety of ways, I am not the same person I was before that awful day, and there is one example of that change that is especially on my mind now.

Before Abby died, when I heard of the death of a child, I considered it a sad event. But now I am far more sensitive to those deaths because I have a better understanding of the lingering pain, the sense of helplessness and the simmering anger over the unfairness of such a loss.

Parents who, like me, lose a child to an accident or, perhaps, to an illness, come to accept the loss, each in their own way. But there is a subset of parents for whom the loss seems unbearable, parents of murdered children. I dont know how a parent could live with the knowledge that someone intentionally took the life of their child.

On Monday, three 9-year-old children, along with three adults, were killed by a lone shooter at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.

Three new sets of parents joined the club, but the nation will quickly forget these deaths.

I know this because Ive seen it play out over and over and over again. From Columbine in 1999 (12 high school students) to Sandy Hook in 2012 (20 first-graders) to Marjorie Stoneman Douglas in 2018 (14 high school students) to Robb Elementary in 2022 (19 elementary school children) and now in Nashville, these tragedies command our attention for a time, but ultimately nothing really changes.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R, Tennessee) said more than he realized when asked what could be done about these school shootings hours after the Nashville carnage.

Were not gonna fix it, he said. Criminals are going to be criminals.

Its worth noting that Burchett didnt say this couldnt be fixed. He said we, as a country, lack the will to fix it.

Hes right.

We made that decision 13 years ago, when the Supreme Courts ruling in District of Columbia vs. Heller provided the broadest possible definition of the Second Amendment, a definition that has led to a profusion of laws that have loosened gun restrictions. Concealed carry, open carry, permitless carry, access to military-grade weapons/ammunition are the byproducts of that decision. The accompanying carnage we see is a consequence of it and any calls for reasonable revisions in gun laws in this country are shouted down by Second Amendment absolutists. Shall not be infringed! they proclaim now that the current interpretation of the Second Amendment suits them.

Well, I think its time that we infringe the hell of the Second Amendment, if thats what it takes.

Christ said, The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. It should be no different with the laws that govern our society. Our laws should protect us, not endanger us.

How can it be that, alone among the developed nations, the United States meekly offers up its children to be slaughtered? For what purpose? A principle?

Other nations would not and have not tolerated that sort of carnage and theyve put a stop to it.

Ask any parent who has lost a child what principle he would abandon, what sacrifice she would make, what freedom he would forfeit to save that childs life.

To say that nothing can be done to stop this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Take heed, Second Amendment absolutists. The next child gunned down at school may be your own, and your thoughts on the subject will change in one horrible instant.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is ssmith@cdispatch.com.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is ssmith@cdispatch.com.

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Slimantics: It's time to Infringe the hell of out of the Second ... - The Commercial Dispatch