Amid the horrifying but ever-increasing scale of mass shootings in America, the most recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was especially heartbreaking. Nineteen beautiful children never returned home to their loved ones. Many more will suffer severe PTSD for a long time to come. Despite these exhausting, seemingly incessant mass killings, as usual there has been much grandstanding from many political leaders and pundits — including a powerful address to the nation by President Biden — but it is likely that little or nothing will done. It's a shameful, rotting, entrenched pattern.
Why can't we allow these all too frequent tragedies to become the wakeup call we use to invoke real change — one where we not only address gun control, but even more importantly, dig deep and tend to the root causes of violence. Maybe we are growing too numb, or too many of us feel resignation about our leaders' in ability to shift the trajectory, but we can't sit quietly and allow this to continue to spiral further out of control. This is a moment that is calling us all to step up in ways we have not yet, but must.
