We’ve said “Never again” so many times that the phrase has lost its meaning.
We said it after Columbine.
We said it after Gabby Giffords’ meet-and-greet was sprayed with bullets, and a nine year old girl was killed.
We said it after Sandy Hook, after 20 children were murdered.
Black and Latino parents say it after every drive by shooting, every murder on our streets.
But it always seems to happen again, and again.
Thirty-five thousand Americans have been killed by gun violence since Sandy Hook. “Never again” quickly turned into “business as usual”, as the NRA flexed its muscles, as Sandy Hook Truthers oozed up from the mud, as politicians scurried to assure their fealty to gun fetishists.
Now, we might have reached a tipping point.
And if it happens, if Isla Vista is what turns the trajectory, it will be, sad to say, because it happened in an affluent, influential neighborhood, filled with college students, a “white” area which wasn’t supposed to witness such horrific violence.
And if it happens, it might be due to the efforts of Richard Martinez, father of one of the slain.
White House.gov