So today there was another shooting and I sent another harried instant message to a friend who lives in the community where said shooting went down; Are you okay? Are your kids okay?
They’re fine. “This is so crazy,” she said. “I just don’t understand how we don’t have gun laws that make sense.”
Nor do I. Nor do 100 million Americans who want sane gun laws, according to the National Gun Victims Action Council (NGAC) NGAC states that of the 4 million NRA members, over 75% want sane gun laws. Yet the NRA leadership believes in a chicken in every basket and a gun in each hand, even criminal hands, even children’s hands, even the hands of the mentally ill. States have passed laws permitting guns on college campuses. As of January 8, licensed gun owners in Texas were allowed to bring their firearms into Texas’ 10 state mental hospitals.
This is crazy.
There are at least 40 books on Goodreads having to do with school shootings. Mine will be one of them. I didn’t plan on writing about a school shooting, but the characters in my book were hurtling toward violent resolution of conflict. Spoiler alert: no students were harmed. I couldn’t do that to them. I live too close to a town where students were senselessly mowed down because somebody who never should have gone near a gun was recklessly allowed access to them, including a killing machine. My novel’s resolution, while far less catastrophic, is fiction, maybe even fairy tale when you consider recent history. Daily tragedy is fact.
While editing my first novel, Over My Live Body, I came across a minor character, a policeman, with the same last name as that notorious school shooter. I quickly did a ‘replace all.’ That last name disappeared. As with my non-lethal shooting scene, I removed negative connotations, I rewrote history as much as I could.
If only it were that easy in the absence of sane gun laws.
They’re fine. “This is so crazy,” she said. “I just don’t understand how we don’t have gun laws that make sense.”
Nor do I. Nor do 100 million Americans who want sane gun laws, according to the National Gun Victims Action Council (NGAC) NGAC states that of the 4 million NRA members, over 75% want sane gun laws. Yet the NRA leadership believes in a chicken in every basket and a gun in each hand, even criminal hands, even children’s hands, even the hands of the mentally ill. States have passed laws permitting guns on college campuses. As of January 8, licensed gun owners in Texas were allowed to bring their firearms into Texas’ 10 state mental hospitals.
This is crazy.
There are at least 40 books on Goodreads having to do with school shootings. Mine will be one of them. I didn’t plan on writing about a school shooting, but the characters in my book were hurtling toward violent resolution of conflict. Spoiler alert: no students were harmed. I couldn’t do that to them. I live too close to a town where students were senselessly mowed down because somebody who never should have gone near a gun was recklessly allowed access to them, including a killing machine. My novel’s resolution, while far less catastrophic, is fiction, maybe even fairy tale when you consider recent history. Daily tragedy is fact.
While editing my first novel, Over My Live Body, I came across a minor character, a policeman, with the same last name as that notorious school shooter. I quickly did a ‘replace all.’ That last name disappeared. As with my non-lethal shooting scene, I removed negative connotations, I rewrote history as much as I could.
If only it were that easy in the absence of sane gun laws.