I have a lot to say and no idea how to say it.
I have a million words running through my head and nothing to say.

Nothing more, at least.

Except maybe this–

When I joined Moms Demand Action, my daughter was still in a crib. Late one night I was up nursing and scrolling through my phone when I saw a post of a little pixie preschool girl balancing on a toilet seat.

The mom had seen her daughter doing this and thought, “What a wonderful and strange child I have,” until the girl said what she was doing.

It was what they did at school. When they played the Quiet Game, so the bad man wouldn’t find them.

Her heart broke, mine broke. Soon after, I joined our fledgling local group of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Parkland, our own community, and then place after place joined the list, and I became more and more involved.

(And to clarify, I am speaking just as me, not for the group).

I learned a lot of data. That though school shootings were terrifying, they were not where most kids got shot. Most kids that get shot, are at home or a friend’s house. Most kids that get shot, are shot because an adult didn’t lock up their gun.

I learned that school shooter drills are not proven to be at all helpful, but have traumatized a generation of students and increased anxiety in schoolchildren. I learned that most school shooters are students at or former students of the schools. That most of the time (like 80% of the time), they get their guns FROM HOME. Or a friend or relative’s home. From an adult who didn’t properly secure their weapons.

There are certainly other conversations to be had– about gun show loopholes and military grade weapons and high capacity magazines and all sorts of things.

But my biggest take away is that when we get adults to properly secure their weapons (in a securely locked container or disabled with a trigger lock), we stop kids from getting shot. We stop kids from being shot unintentionally, we stop kids from killing someone unintentionally, and we can stop a lot of school shootings.

So let’s do that.

And my little community, we’re doing pretty well. We’ve thwarted some scary situations, we’ve faced a few as well. Our city council was on board for a secure storage ordinance, the interim Chief-of-Police was on board too, and then… nothing happened. It lost traction. It wasn’t a priority for them.

Our school board stepped up and sent home information to parents, reminding them of best practices for safe storage. Parental notification of our responsibilities to prevent unauthorized youth access to firearms. (Thanks NVUSD!)

So I’m getting louder with city council and with the mayor. Because there are a lot of things we need to figure out, but there are some things we already KNOW. We know safe storage saves lives.

We knew seatbelts saved lives and said, y’all gotta wear one. We learned pool-gates saved lives and said, y’all gotta get one.

Well guess what?

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for American children.
Secure storage saves lives.
What the fuck are we waiting for?

I won’t be wearing pearls and saying please.
I’ll be in the red shirt, demanding that we DO SOMETHING.

Because we must.
And we can.
So again, I ask– what the fuck are we waiting for?

My daughter now attends kindergarten. My dream that I could get drills abolished by the time she was in school has revealed my naiveté. She’s six years old, missing her two front teeth, and she told me, “If a bad man comes to my school, I’m gonna kick him in the face.”

And I broke. Not in front of her, but that, I think, is when the hollowness started to creep in. The horror.

But I can’t afford horror. I have a child to raise, there isn’t another option here, we have to keep going. We have to do what we can because we may FEEL powerless, but we are NOT powerless.

The myth of powerlessness is a lie that evil whispers in our ears, shouts in our dreams. That there is *nothing* we can do.

But there are things we CAN.
So we must.
Because WHAT THE FUCK YOU GUYS.