Why should we instate stricter gun control laws? Because gunmen have entered our schools. They have violated the most sacred ground on American soil. No, it’s not our churches, it’s not government buildings, and it’s our schools. The place where our children spend most of their day—learning, and playing together. It’s the place where they should be safest. And by making sure that no one in that school legally holds a gun, we’ll keep them safe.
Baloney.
I’m an American citizen, and I’m one of those who are still clinging to the last shreds of the American dream that remain. Instead of advocating for gun control-- laws that would prevent us from bearing arms and defending all that we hold dear--I am here to ask you to uphold the principal our country was founded on. Freedom.
When our country was founded in 1776, what was written on that piece of paper? On the piece of paper were and are words that declare that it is self-evident that we are born with the right to liberty. And that should any government become destructive to this end, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.
And that is what we need to do. We need to stop this, before we surrender our freedom.
When I was a little girl, I witnessed firsthand the horror of what a gun can do. At the age of six, I became acquainted with murder, the hole it leaves, and the shadow that seems to follow you, showing up when you least expect it—in the dark, when you’re all alone. This shadow used a Chinese remake of the AK-47 and a stripped down .22 caliber rifle. It was early in the morning, he walked into a Roman Catholic Abbey, and he shot the first man he saw. He made a circuit of the halls, injuring four people and killing two. And I’ve grown up hearing whispers of stories about how he stood outside the office door of a friend, asking, begging, to be let in, and how he went to the church, sat down in the pew where my family always knelt for Mass, and shot himself.
Stricter gun laws would not have stopped this man. But someone else with a weapon—someone other than the man hell-bent on murder—could have stopped him. And I wish there had been someone there who could have. Someone who had.
I don’t think any of us have forgotten Newtown Connecticut. 20 children murdered. I don’t have to tell you about how they died, or the heroism of the teachers who tried to stop him. You know that story. But the sad truth is that Adam Lanza was the only person with a gun that day. There was no one there to stop him. He didn’t own the weapons he used. They belonged to his mother. Legally. Registered in the knowledge of the law.
Gun control laws won’t stop these men, but a gun can. Wouldn’t you rather that your children stand behind a teacher with a loaded weapon than cower behind their desks while a gunman enters their school? Wouldn’t you rather have the right to defend your family—your home—and have the means to do so? Or do you want to stand empty handed?
And that’s what I have to say today. Do not take my freedom. Please…put guns in our schools. Put guns in our homes. Train the people who will wield them, so they can protect and keep those who would from destroying lives. Hold on to the freedom you have to protect your loved ones and yourself, and don’t let it go. If we surrender our guns, we surrender our freedom.