Kinder

by Ashley Weeks Cart

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Just over a year ago, classrooms full of children were massacred. Innocent babies gunned down thanks to a whole host of problematic systems in our society: from gun laws (or lack thereof) to mental health support and access (or lack thereof) to our society’s depictions and desensitization to violence through television, video games, the news, movies, all the noise noise noise noise of the media around us, to our culture’s characterizations of masculinity and how we speak to our boys about what it means to be male (and our girls about what it means to be female). While it is easier to try to point fingers and blame only one element of our society, the truth is that we have so much work to be done. So many pieces that are broken and to which we must attend.

My heart was shattered on Friday when, a day before the anniversary of Newtown, another community suffered a school shooting. While not at the scale of Newtown or Colombine, Aurora or Virginia Tech, it was a sad reminder of how little progress has been made despite the mass murder of twenty innocent children one year ago.

While in Sweden this spring, Maja and her friends had two topics that constantly arose as points of drastic contrast and confusion to Swedish society: America’s Healthcare System and America’s Gun “Laws.” They were bamboozled. Completely stumped and horrified by how America handles (or doesn’t handle) these two critical aspects of our society. How we don’t take pride and action in protecting one another, our fellow Americans, all of us, with laws and regulations that keep a society (all of a society, not just the privileged elite) safe and healthy. I admitted that I was similarly ashamed of that aspect of American life. While I am indeed a proud American, and grateful to have been born in and live in this country, it does not mean that I don’t think it could be better. And on this front, I was in complete agreement with my Swedish friends.

I snapped these images of my daughters enjoying Kinder eggs that I brought back as gifts from my trip to Sweden. They are illegal in the U.S. because they are considered a “choking hazard.” How truly problematic that we’ll “protect” kids from candy eggs but when it comes to weapons capable of mass murder, we don’t have similarly strong regulations. I was so struck by the Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America campaign as it spoke to this very problem.

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I do not have the answers, but I am a voice, and that voice matters. All of our voices matter. You can’t fight guns with silence.