Land of the Free? Home of the Brave?

It was hard to imagine, after listening to the report about the carnage at my alma mater, NIU that I had gone to this fine institution from 1968-1972. I watched, in horror, as the memorials to the victims were placed in the frozen snow. I heard the families and friends recount how caring and gifted these fine young women and man were and how they were all beginning their lives when their “candle in the wind” existences were snuffed out forever.

It brought me back to the time I was a student at Northern, when I rebelled from my parents tentacle hold on my ideals, by protesting the Viet Nam conflict and marching in a candle light vigil. I juxtaposed that image from 36 years ago, with the candle light vigil held for the victims of this current crazed madman.

At the time, I felt empowered by my marching and protesting; it was the first burst of independence that I felt from my strict home life and upbringing. I recalled the exhilaration of the march and how I connected so easily with all the strangers who surrounded me. We were fighting a common cause and bonded immediately. Did any of those students who were sitting ducks in the lecture hall feel a symbiotic pull towards each other? There were best friends and boyfriends and girlfriends sharing the class, so that must have been the case.

I was so innocent and naïve back in college, and felt I could make a difference with my brightly lit candle while chanting “Hell no, we won’t go!” Those students in the lecture hall were innocent too, trying to better themselves in preparation of facing our world and carving a memorable spot on it. The silent masked gunman snatched that from them, just as an unseen enemy, the Viet Cong, decimated the soldiers during my Viet Nam era protest.

I wanted to make a difference in this world by my nonviolent demonstration and standing up for what I strongly believed in, just as those young people were making a statement by planning their futures within their chosen fields. The difference between our two generations was that I was never fearful of being shot for expressing my oppositional viewpoints; it was my American constitutional right of freedom of speech and assembly.

Where does our Constitution say that a madman, who spent a year in a psychiatric facility and decided not to take his anti anxiety medication, has the inalienable right to inflict his pain and suffering by pulling the trigger on the lives of those blossoming minds? His act of cowardice inflicted agony forever on the lives of their loved ones who were left behind while desperately trying to make sense of the unfathomable.

The saying goes “hindsight is 20/20 vision”. Maybe 36 years ago I shouldn’t have marched in protest over the Viet Nam conflict, but rather in the hopes of ensuring viselike gun control laws that could have potentially strangled this college assassin instead.