Dear America

Dear America,

I can’t feel bad for you anymore.

I am so tired of wasting “thoughts and prayers” on your destructive society. I am tired of watching you spew hate at other races, religions, and cultures, while you are the ones that are dangerous. You are the ones who are killing each other.

I have always made it a rule to be aware of what is going on in the world. How can we be better if we ignore? How can we help if we don’t acknowledge? But I am tired of watching killing after killing and then seeing gun wagging, egotistical Americans yell obnoxiously about how the cure all for this problem is more guns.

The rest of the world is collectively shaking their head. The rest of the world does not sell automatic rifles to civilians off the street. The rest of the world does not shoot up high schools. Churches. Country music festivals.

The rest of the world does not open fire in Elementary schools.

The Facebook profile pictures. The Instagram reposts. The Twitter hashtags. Truckloads and truckloads of “thoughts and prayers”. A waste of time. A waste of energy. A waste of 140 characters. These things do nothing. Everybody “cares”. Nobody acts. Because nobody listens.

And so I can’t think about or pray for you anymore.

All those thoughts and prayers for the 273rd time this year. Because that is how many mass shootings America has had since January 1, 2017.

Two hundred seventy three.

I can’t waste my prayers on a society that refuses to change. The first step is admitting the problem, and as a country, you have yet to do that.

I can not feel bad for a place that refuses to acknowledge its self destruction.

You fill yourselves with hate that is fueled by fear and misunderstanding of anybody who isn’t you. You support banning people from your country. You cheer for a wall to separate you. You refuse to see that the real problem, the real villain, is you.

My family just returned from a trip to the U.S. My daughter loved the warmth and the beaches. She asked me why we couldn’t live there. As we drove by billboard after billboard advertising where one could purchase themselves a new gun, and as I listened to racial slurs be used in every day conversation by locals, and as I listened to your president refer to white supremacists as “very good people” and football players kneeling for your anthem as “sons of bitches”, I struggled to find the words to explain to my six-year-old that we will never live there because I would never want my children to think that any of these things are acceptable, let alone normal.

America’s obsession with guns is so fascinating to me, because never in my 31 years has it ever occurred to me to purchase one.

“But what we need is more guns. Because if we all have guns, we can shoot the shooter.”

“But guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”

When does it stop? When does it sink in? People with guns kill people. In the 273 mass shootings that have occurred in 2017, exactly how many were stopped by a person on the street with a license to carry a weapon? You and your handgun are no match for an automatic rifle on the 32nd floor of a hotel. The answer is to control the sale of firearms. Why is it that everyone can see this but you?

People who can not purchase guns do not massacre schools. People who can not purchase guns do not mow down six and seven-year-old children and their teachers in a time frame of about fifteen minutes. People who can not purchase guns do not murder fifty-eight people and injure 515. The rest of the world is screaming this at you and you refuse to see the problem because you refuse to take responsibility.

Once, my three-year-old threw a toy at his sister and hurt her with it. I took it from him. He lost his privilege because he abused it. Toys are for playing. They are not for hurting each other. I explained this to him. He cried and had a tantrum, but he never got his toy back. And when I asked him later why he lost his toy, he told me it was because he hurt his sister and that was wrong. He understood the reasoning.

He is three.

So why is it that 6,880 people have died from gun shot wounds this year, and America has still not taken the guns? Why is it that 6,880 people have been killed in one year, and you have yet to lose your privilege?

Why is it that you are more concerned about your “right to bear arms” than you are about the mothers whose children never come home?

I’m sorry, America. But I can’t pray for you anymore. I am exhausted, and you are not changing. And according to history, you never will change. And it will get worse, and worse.

And our prayers do nothing.