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We here at blogforiowa would like to extend our thanks and admiration for the young people that stood up to the Republican controlled legislature after Republicans passed yet another insane bill that puts more guns into wider circulation. Thanks for you courage youngsters! 

While the main stream media reported the protest in a very aloof way, iowastartingline.com once again brought the story to life telling us what school shootings do to real students. Big thanks to Ty Rushing for this descriptive narrative:

Valley High School Senior Luke Rowley remembers what it was like going to school the day after the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting in which 19 children and two adults were killed by a gunman.

“I remember a sense of dread in the hallways, students at Valley were terrified for their life—students everywhere were,” he said. “I remember there was a balloon that popped and I could look around the hallways and see fear on people’s faces because they were terrified something as innocent as a balloon was a gun.”

“That is horrifying [that] the first thing my mind goes through and the first thing every student’s mind goes to when they hear a loud noise is that there is a shooting,” he continued.

Luke shared that story during a Monday protest in the rotunda of the Iowa Statehouse. The protest (which included a “die-in” where students feigned being dead) was put on by student organizers from March for Our Lives Iowa and Iowa WTF to oppose legislation that would make it easier to bring guns on the campuses of Iowa schools, community colleges, and universities.

Rushing goes on to explain the bills in the hopper in the legislature. More guns in more places they shouldn’t be.

We all know the daily horror of mass shootings goes on at a pace of more than one a day in this country It has gotten to the point that mass shootings are so normalized that many get only a brief mention on the local news. Sometimes mass shootings are so heinous they get national attention. Isn’t that sick? A mass shooting needs to be heinous to get so much as a mention in the daily news.

School shootings will continue. This is often the time of year there seems to be an uptick in amount of shootings. Passing a bill that puts more guns in the area of schools is literally like firemen pouring gas on a blaze and claiming that more fire will stop the fire. (Yes I know what a fire-break is – that is not this analogy). 

“Thoughts and prayers” is totally useless and only serves to make the utterer of that phrase feel like they did something while doing nothing. If there were a being who could do something to better the situation, they are not doing their job. 

We have the power to do something about this scourge that kills 40 to 50,000 Americans a year and wounds and maims hundreds of thousands of others and costs our country multi-billions of dollars. Reread that second amendment. It is not a prescription for everyone to be armed to the teeth and looking to kill.

Gun sales should be limited as to who can buy and what they can buy. Guns should be engineered in such a way that only the registered owner can use it. Insurance should be mandatory for owning a gun,  just as it is for an automobile. It can be done if we have politicians who will stand up for the good of the citizens.

And once more to the youngsters that protested in the state legislature Monday, Thank You and Keep it up! 

credit to iowastartingline.com for this great pic of the protest at the Iowa capitol