In this country, our rights are under siege. No, not our Second Amendment right, but rather our right to life, an education, a family, a home, a well-paying job, and peace of mind. Our cities have become warzones in more ways than one. From jobs being stripped away and basic human rights being ignored to literal warzones with bullets and shell casings to prove.
Our country has a choice. Will we fight to have our basic human rights protected and enshrined in our Constitution? Or will we let blood money control our politicians who keep allowing war machines to get into the hands of domestic terrorists?
Each traumatic shooting experience we have all had to share was another step toward gun control legislation. At least that is what feels most appropriate when a mentally unstable man can bypass red flag laws and enter a school or grocery store with an assault rifle. Yet, shooting after shooting, body after body, elementary schools, high schools, grocery stores, every one of these attacks on our country was followed by empty promises by politicians.
Most politicians will grandstand and act as if their voice is only powerful during the tragedy. Both parties are deeply guilty of this, and we see it every single time there's a national tragedy that can be blamed on their negligence.
Why is it that these politicians keep voting for and supporting legislation that the vast majority of Americans don't?
Money in politics is one hell of an influence. In fact, it is so influential that they can ignore all of our tragedies because they know they will get a check. We have a serious problem with the people we are sending into Congress.
What we need is comprehensive gun legislation, not a clickbait CSPAN speech emailed to donors and voters. To use all of these domestic terror attacks as political ventures should be deemed reprehensible. Yet that is all politicians give us. Time and time again, we have to choose between a corporatist and a corporatist. Allowing gun control to be foiled by Republicans, who we knew were never going to come to the table anyways, puts blood on their hands. As more and more bodies pile up due to the ignorance and greed of these politicians, the people on the ground are the ones truly affected. Political parties that are beholden to the defense contractors and gun manufacturers will always result in the same answer, no matter how passionate of a speech they give.
I wish that, as a country, we were as passionate about citizens having a right to free health insurance as citizens being able to carry guns. I wish we cared more about attaining an affordable college education rather than a silencer or a bump stock. What this country deems a constitutional right, and which ones it chooses to fight tooth and nail for, is truly barbaric. The way that our politicians will bail out defense contractors rather than protect their constituents, their bank accounts, or their mortgages is truly a prime example of their ineptitude.
If we are at a point in our democracy where our country is defending the Second Amendment more than its right to life, I feel like we took a wrong turn somewhere.
