Love thy gun.

When did we get so angry? When did we get so selfish? When did we get so hateful? When did we draw the line in the sand and decide our side was “the” side?

When those little, innocent kindergardeners at Sandy Hook Elementary were gunned down, it should have brought us to our knees. It should have gotten our attention.  We should have been eager to talk about what we can do as a loving nation to make sure that this never happens again. Our babies deserve protecting. Instead of taking up the cause, we took up more arms. Instead of trying to understand how this could happen, we started to blame each other.  We blamed evil. We blamed the mentally ill. We blamed everyone and everything but guns. The truth is that we probably won’t be able to stop this from happening again. We will bury more of our children because we have created a gun culture in this country that is growing by leaps and bounds. Do we love our guns more than we love our children?  It certainly appears so. We believe more guns and more ammunition and more arguments as to why we should protect our right to carry assault weapons trumps the rights of our babies to live in a safe and loving country.

We have nurtured a culture of violence in our country and it’s killing our innocent.  Where does it end? When will we have exceeded the number of assault weapons we can own and then want or ‘need’ more? Will we seek out bigger and badder guns?  Will we then need to lift the ban on bazookas and tanks? What’s next? When will we as a nation have enough in our arsenals to feel safe again?

My prayer is that we can all open our hearts and our minds to understanding how we got to this point and do whatever we can go change it.  I’d like us to replace our arguments with respectful dialog.  I'd like to see us replace our love for our guns with our love for each other. 

 And may we replace our ‘piece’ with peace.