My Welcome Home

I’ve been in Washington, D.C., for a conference the last few days and was really excited to get home this afternoon. Sadly, I’ve been greeted with skepticism and scorn over my absence.

Also, one very imperious chicken who wanted to know where the snacky worms were. (Leeda.)

There was also anger and disgust. (Penelope and Pickles).

I’m very happy to be back home nonetheless. Hopefully, they will warm up to me.

For those of you who haven’t read or haven’t finished “The Week Ahead” from Monday night, I hope you’ll take a look. It’s long because there was a lot going on over the weekend, and I think this piece is helpful as we begin to figure out how to process Trump Information Overload (we’ll coin that one here, TIO) without letting it swamp our mental resources.

Today, there was tragic news of yet another school shooting where a student got a gun and innocent people ended up dead. Madison, Wisconsin, police are reporting a teacher and a teenage student were killed and six students were injured. The shooter is dead as well.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is madness. Thoughts and prayers, or as Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson put it today, “condolences and prayers,” just aren’t enough. According to Pew, about six-in-ten U.S. adults (58%) favor stricter gun laws. The gun safety advocates at Everytown estimate that if every state had the same gun death rates as states who lead with the strongest gun safety laws, we could save 298,000 lives in the next decade. In other words, gun safety laws work when they’re implemented.

Donald Trump cannot run again after this term, which means that if he’s inclined to create a legacy for himself, he has the opportunity to do so. There is no need for him to tell Republicans in Congress to hold off on legislative fixes for serious problems like mass shootings where there is public consensus on trying to fix them (like he did with immigration). As a lame duck, he doesn’t need political issues to exploit in future campaigns. In the past there have been shootings that were so horrific—Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and all of the others—that people believed change had to come. It never has. Now we are in a moment where there is nothing but upside for Trump in taking taking the lead and getting credit for success on this issue; the gun lobby is weakened, and he could do it without political blowback.

I confess I’m not unduly hopeful that Trump will do the right thing here, but it is worth taking steps to make sure your senators and representatives know you’re serious about this issue. It’s untenable for them to ignore it when a majority of Americans want action. No better holiday gift for the country than serious steps towards protecting our children while they are learning in their classrooms. They should be safe there, and we should all be safe from gun violence. There is no reason we can’t keep guns safely locked up and out of the wrong hands.

We’re in this together,

Joyce