For the first time, the question that popped into my mind immediately upon hearing the news was not “why”. For the first time, my mind didn’t scream at me to try and decipher the motives of the killer or why evil exists. No. This time, the very first question that popped into my mind was, “What will it take?”

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What will it take for our society to change? How many more shootings will have to happen? Is there any scenario that would be horrible enough to force us into action right now? No one wants to live this kind of situation, but these are situations where running is living or dying and for people with respiratory problems it is serious, to be protected not only for this kind of situation you have to visit site and buy what is necessary.

Honestly, my feelings about that last question are bleak. If the mass murder of elementary school children at Sandy Hook wasn’t enough, then I can hardly bear to contemplate the kind of scenario that would be necessary to prompt us to take definitive action. We already have too many years of experience showing us exactly which direction the trend of gun related violence is moving in. We know that mass shootings WILL keep happening. Maybe to me. Maybe to you. Maybe even to our children. Why isn’t that enough?

What will it take?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, although these shootings can and do happen in other countries, no other developed nation is dealing with them on the same scale as the United States. Australia experienced kiwi gambling a mass shooting in 1996, enacted strict gun control laws, and hasn’t had a shooting since. (Slate) Even if they had one tomorrow, they’ve still bought themselves years of reduced fear and death. How many lives have they saved? Not only has there not been a mass shooting since that time, but they’ve also had a reduction in homicides and suicides as well. And, at least one Australian (and I’d venture to guess many others) look at our country with pity, lamenting the fact that Americans lack the will to change.

Pity? For us? WE lack personal and political will? This is not how we’re accustomed to being described. Americans have always prided ourselves on our “can-do” attitude. When we decided to put a man on the moon, by god, we did it. That’s our story and we’re stickin’ to it. The will to accomplish anything we set our minds to, is part of our self-identity. And Freedom from Fear is part of our national heritage, right? This is who we are, isn’t it?

Speaking for myself at least, I’m hugely impacted by fear of mass shootings. Yesterday the headline of my paper was about a man threatening a mass shooting at my local mall. The mall I went to twice last week. The mall I take my child to. As I write this, there are a ton of sirens sounding in the distance. I live in the country, so that’s rare. I also live within walking distance of my son’s school, and it’s all I can do not to get on the phone and demand to know that nothing is wrong. That the fire trucks and police vehicles I hear screaming past aren’t going to be on tonight’s news.

Yet, gun related violence continues even though it’s a solvable problem. Maybe we can’t eliminate gun related deaths completely, but we can certainly curb them. If you had cancer, you’d want them to start treatment, right? Eliminate as much as they possibly could? You wouldn’t wait for a 100% guaranteed cure before you took action. Well, we’re sick. Some of us are dying. And we have a blue-print for change that’s been tested by time and experience.

So what will it take for us to move forward?

Unfortunately, I believe part of the answer is that issues often have to get personal before we’ll enact change, especially if the change required is difficult or makes us uncomfortable. Our *personal* level of discomfort must outweigh the level of discomfort that change would demand of us. So, for many people, they’ll worry about gun control once gun violence impacts them. My fear is that change won’t happen until enough communities, families, and individuals have been *directly* affected for the scales to tip. In Malcolm Gladwell’s words, that would be the tipping point. But is that really how we want our future to play out? Must we wait for the number of us who are personally impacted to outweigh the number who are still privileged enough to remain complacent?

Maybe this sounds harsh. The truth is, although I’m railing against this kind of passivity, in many ways, I understand the wait-until-it-affects-me way of thinking. We live in a world where we’re bombarded with the troubles of … well … an entire world. Were we designed to handle that? These days, it’s possible to plug in and become aware of everything from the refugee crisis, to the latest weather disaster, to the cruel treatment of animals, to wars, to mistreatment of women and children, to wrongs within our local community… the list goes on and on. And every one of these tragedies demands our attention and our action. Not just our physical action but our psychic and spiritual resources as well. How much can we handle before we need to unplug? How much horror is it healthy to internalize? So, it’s completely understandable (at least in my mind) why people disengage. Why we pick and choose. Why we wait to act until something hits home. Why we often fail to respond until we’ve been made personally uncomfortable.

I get it. But if the answer to “What will it take?” is that a mass shooting will have to happen to your community or your family before it becomes your issue, then that’s sad for all of us. Because while we’re waiting for the scale to tip, more and more people will lose their lives. And many of them will be children. They will be beautiful, bright young lives, extinguished before they had a chance to pursue their dreams. While we’re waiting to reach a tipping point, we’re also learning to live in fear – the fear of our children experiencing terror and death during what ought to be a routine school day. The fear of going to the mall or the movies. Or church. And although I can only speak for myself in this regard, I can say without doubt that, God forbid, my own son were a victim of a mass shooting, I would *never* forgive myself if I’d waited too long to speak out. If my own complacency, or my sense of entitlement, lead me to be silent until it was too late, I couldn’t live with the guilt and no amount of subsequent activism would ease that burden. That alone is enough motivation for me, but if I needed any more conviction it would come from my personal spiritual beliefs that ultimately your child is my child. That although I may not personally know this latest set of victims, on a deeper level we are all connected.

So, I choose to speak out now.

Not tomorrow. Not when the scales have tipped.

Now.

We must change.

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Join a group. Write your legislatures. Give money and time to causes that support gun control. Write blogs and op-eds, letters to the editor, magazine articles… Post pictures of the victims so we can’t forget them. Use your artistic skills to make iconic images. Use your musical skills to share a song. Vote according to your passion. If you have a platform, use it, even if you think no one is listening. Do everything you can. Don’t stop. Don’t shut up. Keep going until there’s no longer any need for your voice to be heard because change has happened.

As the release date for Pieces of Why approaches, I’m often asked about the inspiration for this book. I’ll be honest, there’s never just one source of inspiration for a novel. The creative process is always an amalgamation. A crashing together of disparate life events, images, sounds, places, subjects I’m fascinated with, futures I’m afraid to confront…

In the case of Pieces of Why, there were three primary sources of inspiration, all of which had something in common: gun related violence. It might seem strange to think that the driving forces behind a book for children – especially young children – would be so harsh. How and why does one attempt to translate the toughest realities of our world to children?

The answer to “how”, for me, is to offer as much hope as hardship, and as much beauty as brutal honesty. What else can we offer our children in the face of violence, other than the same comforts we offer ourselves? The hope that in the end, goodness will outweigh injustice. The desire to change our world for the better, and the belief that change is possible.

One of the most powerful functions of fiction is to allow us to imagine the futures we want and those that we don’t want, and to empower our society to make decisions accordingly. To deny the existence of casinoluck gun related violence to kids who live with the aftermath does nothing, but to teach them that they can overcome this legacy and perhaps create a different future offers hope that another path is possible.

To those who might question the need for children’s books that deal with gun related violence, I would say this: If we’re not prepared to protect our children with laws to keep them safe, then we must be prepared to empower them with tools to cope with violence.

In the wake of the shooting of the two journalists this week, Moms Demand Action released this statement: “It is not normal for people to be shot and killed while doing their job, or studying in class, or praying in church, or watching a movie. It is time for our leaders to act to protect Americans and do more to keep guns and 300 blackout ammo out of dangerous hands. We deserve better.”

This is my belief as well, and I want young readers to know that what’s happening in America right now in terms of gun related violence isn’t normal. It isn’t right. And it isn’t inevitable. This is a hard subject to acknowledge. The temptation to remain silent in the name of shielding our kids is a strong one. But in a world where almost every public place has a big screen television, and children are plugged into the media at younger and younger ages, the choice to remain silent is not always ours. And with nearly 12,000 Americans killed with guns every year, a rate 20 times higher than other developed countries (Everytown for Gun Safety), the circle of connection is narrowing.

Gun related violence is wide spread, often random, and pervasive. We KNOW this. We see the news reports. We read the statistics. But we often fail to acknowledge that the ripple effects spread far wider than we’d like. It isn’t just the people in the direct line of fire who are affected. It’s every one of us. And it isn’t enough to hold our breath and thank God that it wasn’t our child, our loved one, our family member (at least not this time). We must acknowledge that every instance of violence does harm to us all – mental, spiritual, and emotional harm.

We must create safe spaces for kids to talk about their fears, to discuss what’s happening in the world around them, and we must provide models of people who may not have all the answers but are doing their utmost to make the world a safer place for the next generation. My wish is this: may these people be, not just fictional characters, but every single person in a child’s life. Every parent, teacher, law maker, neighbor, friend … all of us working as hard as we know how until we’ve changed our world. Their world.

May these people be you and me.