Maine Legislature ought to convene particular session on gun violence
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Sandra Lynn Hutchison is a author, trainer, and the editor of elixir-journal.org She lives in Orono and teaches within the Wilmette Institute and the Bahá’í Institute for Larger Training.
That is the primary time I’ve had a dental appointment cancelled due to gun violence – sure, the mass taking pictures in Lewiston. My husband and I dwell in Orono, however we have been alleged to journey to Portland on Thursday so he may very well be handled by a specialist. A minor inconvenience you may suppose – why write about it when there was a lot lack of life? But I do as a result of this minor inconvenience reveals simply how pervasive the consequences of gun violence are, with a manner of seeping into each side of our every day lives.
At the moment I’m grieving. All of us are. However I’m additionally considering of the state of Maine because it was after I arrived right here 23 years in the past. My husband and I spent the primary years of our marriage in New York Metropolis, in a neighborhood through which you didn’t exit at evening. Then we moved to Hong Kong, a safer metropolis, however one through which a pregnant girl (me) might simply be crushed by surging crowds in a subway station. We arrived in Orono after a year-long cease in certainly one of New Jersey’s bed room communities — that was not for us.
To dwell in a small New England city – it had lengthy been our dream. And right here we have been, on I-95 heading north. We handed an indication that learn: “Welcome to Maine — The best way life ought to be.” Then we got here to a toll sales space. “Good morning,” the attendant stated, “how are you?” This place was positively completely different from New Jersey, my husband noticed. Not lengthy after, we stopped at a fuel station, and as I walked into the ladies’s toilet, I observed a purple rose in full bloom, in a white vase somebody had positioned on the window sill. Daylight poured by the panes. The restroom appeared prefer it had been cleaned by somebody’s very meticulous mom. The best way life ought to be — perhaps it was true?
In all of the locations on the earth I’ve traveled and lived — and there are a lot of — I’ve by no means discovered myself in such a big neighborhood of persistently courteous and caring folks. We do issues otherwise right here in Maine. We’ve got a robust sense of neighborhood. We all know each other, which is why I ask what we’re all asking: How might this occur right here?
Like all of us, I’m looking for solutions. How did this individual, with an recognized psychological sickness, slip by the cracks? How was it that he was in a position to personal the gun he used to finish all these valuable lives?
I ask and we should ask. And we should pray, too, for these whose lives have been without end modified by the horrific and utterly sudden lack of a beloved member of the family or good friend. As pressing is the necessity to collect and talk about how this might have occurred.
I’m writing to ask our legislators to convene a particular session dedicated to taking a contemporary take a look at the issue of gun violence in our state and, as they do, to hunt, within the spirit of true session, an answer that serves the widespread good.
Allow us to all step down from our personal private interest horses, allow us to abandon our long-held and fiercely-defended positions, and allow us to look dispassionately at what would serve us all finest, not as people or as particular curiosity teams however as an entire neighborhood.
