School shooting

Last week, I watched the heartbreaking news out of Florida State University – another campus turned into a crime scene, another community shattered by gun violence. As someone who lost her husband in a school shooting, I can tell you: these moments are never just headlines, they are wounds that never fully heal. Chris Hixon, my husband, was murdered on February 14, 2018, during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. He was an athletic director, a Navy veteran and, above all, a protector. When the shooting began, he did not hesitate. He ran toward the danger to save students. He was shot and killed while doing everything right. Chris was trained to use a weapon. He served our country with honor.

President Joe Biden delivered a speech yesterday in response to the Uvalde school shooting that can be summed up in one sentence: “I don’t trust you.” There are at least 20 million so-called “assault rifles” in the US, and in proposing to ban these weapons, Biden and his supporters are purporting that the very presence of guns causes people to be violent — that in the absence of laws making it illegal for us to kill each other, we will all inevitably become mass shooters. An assault weapons ban and increased background checks are the only things, they say, capable of stopping us from becoming one of the demented gunmen who inflict tragedy and evil on our world.