Only "Generation Lockdown" can resolve America's gun debate

[Robb]

Because of what happened in Newtown last December, every American kid traipses through the country's public, private and parochial schools fully aware that their safety is not guaranteed. They are reminded of this fact every time their teachers conduct a lockdown drill. Call them Generation Lockdown.

As a society, every day that our boys and girls strap on their backpacks and hop onto their yellow school buses, we ask ourselves, will they return? When we arrive at the school for parent-teacher conferences, concerts and school plays we are relieved to find the doors locked. We smile into the intercom as we are buzzed in, and wonder if this glass can withstand the velocity of semiautomatic gunfire.

(snip)

Ethan couldn't sleep. I sat by his bed. "Why can't we just leave Newtown, Dad?" he asked. We had just returned from a spring break vacation in California. "Why can't we just move to Santa Barbara or L.A. and get away from all this?"

I know it is hard, I said. None of what this town is going through is normal. You are dealing with stuff that I'd never seen in 45 years — and that no one should ever see. But it will give you enormous strength and resiliency. You will have known kids who lost a brother or sister, adults who lost a child. You will have seen a community pull together, and people come to the aid of those in deep despair. Your generation of Newtown kids will be unlike any other in history. You will understand why every day is worth celebrating. And you will be in a position to help others.

With every birthday that passes — 26 of them, enough for one every other week — we are reminded of what happened in our town. The kids are, too. They see the colored balloons on street corners and the Facebook postings. And they decide, completely on their own, to wear the favorite colors of the children whose birthdays they should be celebrating: purple when Dylan Hockley turned seven; athletic jerseys for Jack Pinto, and so on.

There is nothing hollow about these gestures. They are the acts of a cohort of children who understand better than most adults that by honoring those whose lives were brutally cut short last December they might stop it from happening again, in another community just like their own — perhaps even in the state of Ohio.

Read More: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/thomson-reuters/130925/only-generation-lockdown-can-resolve-americas-gun-debate

[Hoyt]

1. Perhaps the next generation will have a better perspective on gunz. Of couse,

the NRA and gun culture parents will work to recruit the kids into the cult (so to speak).

Good OP.

[Robb]

2. Thanks. I thought it hopeful.