All day yesterday, Westporters attended “March For Our Lives” rallies. They traveled to New York, Washington, Hartford and Shelton.
Former Westporters marched in places like Roxbury, Los Angeles, Delray Beach, Florida — and West Palm Beach, getting as close as they could to Mar-a-Lago.
Westporters temporarily finding themselves in places like Patagonia, Chile also marched.
And when it was all over — as dusk was falling — Westporters marched here too.
Over 1,000 friends and neighbors rallied on the Ruth Steinkraus Cohen Bridge, and on Main Street. Their message was loud and clear: This American scourge must end.
One of many signs, as marchers gathered at the Westport Library. (Photo/Chuck Greenlee)
Poppy Harrington, Marin Banks and Ella Harrington joined over 1,000 Westporters last night. (Photo/Robert Harrington)
On the Ruth Steinkraus Cohen Bridge. (Photo/Janette Kinnally)
A small part of the large crowd on the Post Road at Main Street. (Photo/Ellen Lautenberg and Kristan Hamlin)
Senator Richard Blumenthal with “Westport Moms.com” Megan Brownstein and Melissa Post.
Marchers on Main Street. (Photo/Annette Norton)
Members of the United Methodist Church stood together. (Photo/Ellyn Gelman)
Their message is clear. (Photo/Bridget Curtis)
Rob Feakins was in Washington yesterday. He compiled this short video. It’s a fitting coda to a passionate day.
So proud of Westport. I am especially proud of all the terrific Westport kids who came out last night in our town and raised their voices in favor of gun control. They, and their dedicated parents, are leading the way. They inspire.
Could you send the video again? It didn’t make it to my computer. Thank you!
New video is in the story. There was a glitch with the other – sorry.
Interesting article entitled “School shootings are extraordinarily rare. Why is fear of them driving policy?” in today’s Washington Post.
One of the middle paragraphs:
“The chance of a child being shot and killed in a public school is extraordinarily low. Not zero — no risk is. But it’s far lower than many people assume, especially in the glare of heart-wrenching news coverage after an event like Parkland. And it’s far lower than almost any other mortality risk a kid faces, including traveling to and from school, catching a potentially deadly disease while in school or suffering a life-threatening injury playing interscholastic sports.”
Actually an interesting disuccsion of risk, reality and emotional reaction.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/school-shootings-are-extraordinarily-rare-why-is-fear-of-them-driving-policy/2018/03/08/f4ead9f2-2247-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html?utm_term=.05e6c9eb4ba0
Nice NRA talking point…..
Uh-huh. From that staunch NRA mouthpiece Washington Post.
Attacks are the world trade center are also exceedingly rare, but we launched two wars in response. Why doesn’t America feel the same amount of outrage and response to the routine slaughter of children and other citizens?
attacks ON the world trade center…
I’m not sure what wars after 9/11 have to do with banning guns in the context of school shootings. If you were trying to make some sort of an analogy, I would suggest you made a poor one. The military actions, in theory anyway, were more akin to going after the sponsors/perpetrators of the crime, and not after the weapon.
A much better analogy for banning guns would have been banning commercial aircraft (and, therefore, commercial air travel) post 9/11 so no passenger could use a commercial aircraft as a weapon again. I don’t think there were or are many advocates of that, though certainly controls and security around commercial aviation were enhanced.
If your point is that Americans should be as outraged over the death of foreigners as it is over American schoolchildren but aren’t, that’s actually an interesting question that has little, if anything, to do with demonstrations and efforts to ban guns in the US.
For what it is worth, I don’t (directly anyway) have a dog in the gun fight. At a personal level, I probably don’t care one way or the other if guns are banned. I don’t think I need one and I don’t particularly want to buy one so if I couldn’t get one, it probably wouldn’t be the end of my world.
In that context, I understand why many think guns are unnecessary. However, I also understand why others might disagree with that view. I can imagine various scenarios where I might, in fact, think access to a gun would be helpful. Those scenarios are, in my current view, mostly low probability edge cases that I don’t worry about excessively.
I can also imagine that there are scenarios where even you or other anti-gun folks commenting on 06880, might think that having a semi-automatic weapon handy.
Putting that aside, I more care about two things:
1) On subjects affecting broad swaths of people, that decisions made are thoughtful and rational choices based on facts rather than potentially irrational choices based on biases and emotions and ignoring facts. Choices have consequences, many of them unintended.
2) Unintended consequences may be benign but are often bad and long term even if the original choices and actions were well-intentioned and delivered the immediately desired result. The proverbial “be careful what you wish for”.
In that context, the WAPO article is an interesting and thoughtful take on the subject thus well worth reading, which is why I linked it.
Way to go, Audrey and Julia!