Читать книгу The Unthinkable - Lois A. Schaffer - Страница 12

Introduction

We live in a world of willful, unlawful violence. Gun violence has victimized many innocent people—not only those who are murdered but their families and friends as well. While mass deaths affect us all, we react more viscerally to the news of a young person’s death, especially under violent circumstances. The impact is even more shattering when we know the victim personally. Such a death sears the very existence of the people who loved and valued the murdered individual.

My daughter’s life was suddenly extinguished by gun violence on December 16, 2008. The devastating effect her death exerted and continues to exert on the lives of those who loved her emphasizes for us the compelling urgency to banish the scourge of gun violence largely perpetrated by the possession of illegal handguns.

Activists against the possession of illegal handguns say that the large number of deaths that occur can be translated in terms of thirty people per day, or the equivalent of a typical classroom of children.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg confirmed this statistic. The day after the Tucson shooting, he was invited to speak at the services of the Evangelical Crusade of Fishers of Men in Brooklyn on the first anniversary of the Haitian earthquake. He included the effects of the Arizona tragedy in his remarks, saying, “Thirty-four Americans are murdered—every single day. Tomorrow there will be another thirty-four. And so it will continue . . .”

Following is one personal story.