Father wants actions, not words

by Brian Leubitz

The tragedy in Isla Vista is just a few days old, and the emotions are still very raw. But one victim’s father has some direct words for politicians calling with their condolences:

“I don’t care about your sympathy. I don’t give a s— that you feel sorry for me,” Richard Martinez said during an extensive interview, his face flushed as tears rolled down. “Get to work and do something. I’ll tell the president the same thing if he calls me. Getting a call from a politician doesn’t impress me.”

Saying that “we are all to blame” for the death of his 20-year-old son, Martinez urged the public to join him in demanding “immediate action” from members of Congress and President Obama to curb gun violence by passing stricter gun-control laws.

“Today, I’m going to ask every person I can find to send a postcard to every politician they can think of with three words on it: ‘Not one more,’ ” he said Tuesday. “People are looking for something to do. I’m asking people to stand up for something. Enough is enough.” (Washington Post / Kimberly Kindy)

The retort from the NRA, if they had deigned to comment about yet another gun-powered rampage, is the tried and true “guns don’t kill people…”. But the fact remains that while there was a dangerously sick person behind this crime, guns made it far more lethal. Cliff Shecter has a great story up on the Daily Beast about this twisted line of thinking:

Cars also have a purpose other than killing. As do knives. And although, tragically, three young men were killed after being stabbed by the killer in Santa Barbara, perhaps the clearest comparison between gun violence and knife violence is provided by looking at the attack that occurred at a Chinese school in Henen Province the very same day as the Newtown Massacre. Twenty-three students were attacked in Henen and none died-as opposed to 20 murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary. Or how about the 22 injured in a knife attack at a school in Pittsburgh this past April? Nobody died there, either.

Read both stories quoted above, they are worth a few minutes to digest. How many more children must die for the NRA to be satisfied that we need real gun control? We can certainly do a better job treating mental illness, though I haven’t seen the NRA-backed politicians really rallying for that cause, but we will never truly reach everybody who needs help. However, we can make it harder to attain the guns and ammunition that turn an incident into a nationwide tragedy.