This afternoon as I was driving my son to school in Woodland Hills, I was literally almost hit by a speeding police car. I swerved to the middle of the road, as they whizzed past at about 90 miles per hour, other cars following on their trail, sirens blaring, helicopters whirring…
I caught my breath, and dropped my son off at his Kindergarten, wondering if there was some kind of a high-speed chase on the nearby freeway. After I returned home, I found out that there was an officer shot at our neighborhood high school, El Camino, just two blocks away from my son’s Kindergarten. This is in a nice suburban neighborhood, one of the best high schools in Los Angeles. The shooter was a man in his forties, who was suspiciously loitering around the school, when the officer approached him. He shot the officer in the chest and ran off, into our neighborhoods.
I immediately called my son’s kindergarten and told them to lock their doors, since they are only two blocks away from where this incident took place. Before I could even get back, the streets surrounding my son’s school were shut off, cops swarming everywhere. I called the school again, and was told they were on lockdown. Are you getting this, people - MY SON’S KINDERGARTEN WAS ON LOCKDOWN.
I went back anyway, and against the schools’ initial protest, I took my son home.
We are just days away from the murderous rampage in Arizona. This is the second shooting in the Los Angeles school district in 2 days. And yet no one wants to give up one ounce of their freedom when it comes to guns.
Who, exactly, is free, when every lunatic in America has the right to own a gun?
Who is free, when I can’t feel safe dropping my son off at Kindergarten?
Who is free, when I can no longer take my children to political rallies and peaceful demonstrations?
I’ll tell you who is free. The lunatic with the gun. He is free, running loose in my neighborhood as I write this. He is free to buy a gun, to carry a gun, and to open fire at will. He is free to act upon his insane notions on a whim.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I’ll tell you this. The second amendment was written in a time when the right to bear “arms” meant Muskets, not semi-automatics. This “right” has been carried too far. Okay, you want a gun for self-protection, or a rifle for hunting - whatever floats your boat. But what gives citizens the “right” to carry semi-automatic weapons in our society? This is an American problem. You don’t see this level of violence in countries who have gun control.
When nineteen people were shot at a peaceful political gathering in Arizona, when a student brought a glock to school in L.A. yesterday and shot two kids, when a police officer was shot at a high school with a semi-automatic, when nine schools today were on lockdown, when KINDERGARTEN was ON LOCKDOWN, it is clear that something is very, very wrong with our society. We can no longer go on with business as usual.