MEMPHIS, Tenn. — It has been nearly a week since an 18-year-old gunman, filled with racial hate and armed with an assault rifle, fatally shot 10 innocent people at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store. Most of those who lost their lives were African American.
The oldest victim was an 86-year-old grandmother who just happened to stop by the store after visiting her husband at a nearby nursing home. They had been married 68 years and she was his primary caretaker.
Since the massacre, our emotions have swung from shock, to sadness, to anger – and finally to disgust. That disgust is the realization that political leaders will do nothing to stop the easy availability of military style assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
But acceptance should not be the final stage. We must keep the pressure on our policy makers to do something - if not an outright ban on these killing machines and the sale of hundreds of rounds of ammunition, we should at least make it mandatory that any time someone makes a public threat, at a school or the workplace, it must be reported to authorities. And those authorities must seize any weapons belonging to the person making the threat. Plus, that person must never be allowed to own another gun.
That’s not too much to ask if it prevents the loss of life as a result of hate racial or otherwise.