Editorial
In this space, we try to share a piece of our minds and occasionally a slice of our hearts. This week it is hard to not hand control over to the former.
This weekend’s mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio were frankly a gut punch to our nation and country’s consciousness. 31 deaths in less than 24 hours will do that.
While mass shootings happen all too frequently, the events of this weekend felt different. There seemed to be an immediate outcry from across the country for someone, anyone in a position of authority to make change.
An article on the website for National Public Radio compiled various calls to action from D.C. United midfielder Ale Bedoya, to country singer Kasey Musgraves.
After scoring a goal, Bedoya grabbed a field level microphone and shouted, “Hey Congress, do something. End gun violence now.”
A Tweet by Musgraves early Monday morning stuck out. First, she tweeted, “Don’t you hear us, @ realDonaldTrump? Don’t you hear our pain? You have the power to become a hero.”
Here at The Madill Record, we believe in the good in people. That faith in humanity tells us that fixing the gun violence problem in America is possible.
However, our experiences writing about criminals and politicians have made us more cynical than we’d like to admit.
Yes, we were paying attention to President Donald Trump’s address from the White House on Monday morning. We appreciated his statements that people, “judged a grave risk to public safety do not have access to firearms” and that “mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.”
While most workplaces contain differences of opinion (and our office is not different), there are some things that unite us. Here at The Madill Record, we’ve talked about this topic at length since early Monday morning. Guns are a divisive topic and we get that. However, we knew that as a leader in Marshall County, we needed to share our position.
We want mental illness funding increased or at the least prioritized by both the Congress and the Oklahoma Legislature because a solution cannot be had with just one level of government.
We also want to see local municipalities and county-level law enforcement receive the funds and training they need to deal with both mentally ill suspects and active shooter situations.
As you have likely seen over the past few months, the new staff at The Madill Record believes in strong crime reporting. We also believe in crime prevention as we are also tax payers, with most of our tax dollars going back into Marshall County.
We all hail from Oklahoma, Louisiana or Texas. That means we are Southerners.
That means a particular value system. We care about our neighbors even when they vote differently than we do.
Please know that while we are members of the media, we are not part of some elite class of the citizenry. Rather, we are working class. We work hard for 40 hours a week (often more) to pay the same bills that everyone else does. We buy groceries at places like Super C and Wal-Mart.
Oh, and some of us are gun owners. And you better believe that no one at The Madill Record is advocating a ban on assault weapons, confiscating anyone’s guns or alternatively giving every man, woman and child a gun.
Frankly, we are tired of the rhetoric when it comes to guns. And while we get that politicians usually mean well when they send some version of thoughts and prayers, we believe this is not enough.
Call us crazy, but we need our elected officials at both the state and federal levels to actually talk to each other.
It appears to us as though none of these so-called public servants have ever participated in a group decision such as the family of ten that wants to go out to a restaurant but cannot pick a place or ever been at an impasse with a spouse.
It’s time the leaders of the land of the free start acting brave and sit at a table to figure how we fix our country. Please representatives, senators, Madame Speaker and Mr. President stop running for re-election long enough to take a hard look at the laws that have brought us to the point. Together you have the power to make the changes needed to save lives of we the people.