by World Moms Network | Feb 22, 2018 | 2018, Adolescence, Family, Guest Post, Gun Violence, Health, Mental Health, Parenting, USA, World Parenting
My teenager has had a rough few months. She came to me with the information that she felt suicidal and had a plan to end her own life.
I brought her to our local emergency room, where my baby girl had her clothes taken away, an alarm strapped to her wrist, and a room right across from the nurses’ station where she could be constantly monitored. After a long day of evaluations, testing, and phone calls, my child was transferred to another hospital that had a juvenile psychiatric ward.
After her stay in the psychiatric ward, my daughter enrolled in a partial hospitalization program.
Her clinician there told me I needed to lock up all of our household medication and anything sharp. Knives in the kitchen, razors in the bathroom, and even child safety scissors that couldn’t cut hair all had to be locked up in a metal container, not plastic, as plastic could be broken fairly quickly. I asked the woman telling me all of this whether this level of action was necessary for a teenager who had only had thoughts of hurting herself without acting on any of those ideas.
My daughter’s clinician told me that nothing would really, truly keep my child safe if she was determined to hurt herself. The goal in locking up those medications and sharp objects was to make it more difficult for her to act impulsively if she felt the urge to self-harm. I have thought about those words frequently these past few days. We live in a society where weapons are easily obtainable. Somehow, our society has not yet realized that legally allowing such free access to semi-automatic weapons is allowing people like my daughter, whose mental states are not where they should be, to be able to make spontaneous decisions to harm themselves or others.
Let me be clear: I am not talking about criminals here. People who want to break the law will find ways to do so, and I will not waste my words bickering over why changing the laws won’t do anything to stop lawbreakers. I am talking about people who are mostly law-abiding but are struggling with serious mental health issues or going through extremely emotionally charged situations, such as a horrific divorce. I am also not talking about infringing on anyone’s Second Amendment rights. I’m not arguing that US citizens shouldn’t be allowed to own guns.
I am, however, stating that any random U.S. citizen should not be able to obtain whatever kind of weapon they desire whenever they want it. No one told me I couldn’t keep scissors in my house while my daughter struggles with depression and anxiety. Her doctors and therapists realized that scissors would be present, much like guns will always be present in our country. Instead, her doctors told me how to prevent my child from using those scissors to hurt herself on an impulse while she battles depression. When my daughter needs to use scissors for a project, I’m going to give her the child safety scissors instead of something sharp enough to cut or stab herself. Our country should likewise exercise caution.
The Second Amendment was written long before the invention of today’s weaponry. We should update our gun laws. Horrible impulses to hurt other people with semi-automatic weapons should not be able to be planned and performed as easily as they are today.
Knowing my daughter’s current battles with anxiety and depression, I am concerned about the day she is old enough to legally obtain a gun. She is medicated and receiving treatment at the moment, but I will not always be around to watch out for her mental state. God willing, my child will fully recover and live a long and healthy, happy life. Regardless, I want our country to come together and make it more difficult for my child to obtain a gun, so if she does ever again have that impulsive thought to end her own life, it will be harder for her to do so.
This is an original post submitted to World Moms Network. The author has been verified by our editing team, but has requested to remain anonymous.
For more on gun control in the USA and how you can help, see “World Voice: Parkland Students Leading the Way for Gun Reform.”
Photo credit to Kevin Doncaster. This photo has a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.
World Moms Network is an award winning website whose mission statement is "Connecting mothers; empowering women around the globe." With over 70 contributors who write from over 30 countries, the site covered the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good.
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by Cindy Levin | Feb 19, 2018 | Gun Violence, World Voice
Another school shooting in America. It hardly seems newsworthy anymore sometimes because it’s becoming so common in my country. This time Parkland, Florida is the city added to the list of other communities where a gun was fired in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, killing 17 people. That’s a list no one wants to be on. But the national conversation around this shooting is turning out to be very different. Is it because the shooter was more imaginative that those before him? No. Is it because it was more students died? It’s true that this was the most deadly massacre since Sandyhook Elementary in Newtown, CT, but no. There is something else distinctly different happening in the media and it has everything to do with the response of the victims themselves.
An Unusual Response
Generally, we have a gruesome routine of reactions to an American mass shooting. People express shock that such a tragedy could happen. Politicians send out statements of “thoughts and prayers” to the families of the victims. Some citizens and a few politicians start to call for stricter gun safety laws. Then, critics accuse gun safety advocates or trying to politicize the conversation and being insensitive to the feelings of victims by wanting to talk about gun policy “too soon” while families still grieve. This loop gets played out over and over again with each deadly shooting. It’s so cliche that we have late night comedy show sketches and parody news articles about it.
But this time, the students of Stoneman Douglas High School have a completely different reaction in 2018 than those from the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 or any other school shooting. They immediately took to social media – some during the actual event – and took the story into their own hands. What we are seeing from these young leaders is extraordinary.
Seventeen-year-old senior David Hogg thought to record footage on his phone during the shooting and spoke passionately to MSNBC within hours. During the shooting, he didn’t know he would survive, so he thought his recorded last minutes might show the world what happened in a way that would actually change things and prevent future tragedies. He told reporters, “We don’t need ideas. We need action. We need action from our elected officials and we need action from the civic public. Because without that, this is going to happen again.” Most people are not so eloquent or composed at any time, much less immediately after an emotional trauma.
Students Use Twitter as a Platform
As the hours passed, more students mobilized. Florida senator Marco Rubio made a very typical statement cautioning against jumping to conclusions before the facts are in. He asserted that it was not appropriate to use the incident as an opportunity to call for increased gun control. When his comments went out via Twitter, several Parkland students used that as an opportunity to directly communicate with their senator. One of them, identified as @sarahchad_, on Twitter sent him this message: “As a student who was inside the school while an active shooter was wreaking terror and havoc on my teachers and classmates with an AR-15, I would just like to say, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND.”
Fox News celebrity Tomi Lahren found herself the target of Parkland students when she tweeted the argument that “the Left” should give time to let families grieve and asserted that the shooting was not a “gun issue.”
“I was hiding in a closet for 2 hours. It was about guns. You weren’t there, you don’t know how it felt. Guns give these disgusting people the ability to kill other human beings. This IS about guns and this is about all the people who had their life abruptly ended because of guns.”
“A gun has killed 17 of my fellow classmates. A gun has traumatized my friends. My entire school, traumatized from this tragedy. This could have been prevented. Please stfu tomi”
Mobilizing for the Future
By Saturday, the students were officially coordinated and mobilized. They held a Rally to Support Firearm Safety Legislation that hit its peak with a fiery speech from Emma Gonzalez that quickly went viral. Speaking forcefully through her tears – voice never wavering – she made it clear that Parkland students were determined to be the last school shooting and the ones we would read about in future textbooks for changing the conversation about gun control.
The rally and social media activity created massive momentum that continues to build. On Sunday, high school junior Cameron Casey and his classmates announced the nationwide “March for Our Lives” to take place on March 24. It will happen in Washington D.C. and around the country in collaboration with Everytown for Gun Safety. So many students contacted gun safety organization Moms Demand Action for Gunsense in America (started after the school shooting in Newtown, CT and affiliated with Everytown) for collaboration that there is now discussion about the advocacy group forming a special student branch. I hope that these savvy teens continue to make giant waves and be an important part of gun policy discussion moving forward. They have already grabbed the narrative and I hope they don’t let go. I think this last tweet sums up their resolve nicely.
@longlivekcx
let it be known that cruz messed with the wrong school. We as students are using social media as a platform to have our voices heard. Let it be known that we are and will be in contact with our legislators and politicians.
Change is now and it is starting with the survivors.
The website for the new student branch of everytown is “Student’s Demand Action” http://act.everytown.org/sign/join-students-demand-action?source=twno_216&refcode=twno_216&utm_source=tw_n_&utm_medium=_o&utm_campaign=216
Cynthia Changyit Levin is a mother, advocate, speaker, and author of the upcoming book “From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started.” A rare breed of non-partisan activist who works across a variety of issues, she coaches volunteers of all ages to build productive relationships with members of Congress. She advocated side-by-side with her two children from their toddler to teen years and crafted a new approach to advocacy based upon her strengths as a mother. Cynthia’s writing and work have appeared in The New York Times, The Financial Times, the Washington Post, and many other national and regional publications. She received the 2021 Cameron Duncan Media Award from RESULTS Educational Fund for her citizen journalism on poverty issues. When she’s not changing the world, Cynthia is usually curled up reading sci-fi/fantasy novels or comic books in which someone else is saving the world.
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