Monday, June 12, 2017

In Remembrance of PULSE - What will it take?


                     


Dear Juan:
 
Today is the first deeply saddening Remembrance Day of the PULSE shooting in Orlando last year.  It should remind us all of how important is to stand up for Equality and Human Rights, in all our communities, on a daily basis.

What will it take???? 
Neither the lives of 20 children and 6 adults, killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, in Newtown, Connecticut, nor the lives of 12 people killed and 70 others injured at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, were enough in 2012, to move Florida or America towards sensible gun control legislation in order to put an end to this continuing senseless carnage ....

Last year, on June 12, 2016, 49 
people were killed, and 58 wounded at gay nightclub PULSE in Orlando, Florida ... 

Although the mass shooting at PULSE nightclub in Orlando was classified as a terrorist act and hate crime... independent of whatever the cause, or whoever the target ... the result is always the same: Innocent people being killed!
Upon hearing the news that morning ... I cried, felt heavy hearted and deeply sad, but at the same time also kept growing immensely frustrated and upset... I kept asking myself: "What will it take for all of us ... Floridians ... Americans to finally realize that we really don't need to be able buy an AR-15 military, mass killing, semi-automatic assault rifle that can fire off 100 rounds or more within minutes, in order to live safer?" 
I know ... I know the arguments on both sides of the issue well ... I heard them many, many times ... and just thinking of our country's resulting deadly paralysis over this makes me wanna throw up!!!
As of 2014 there were about 9 million of those AR-15 military, mass killing semi-automatic assault rifles in circulation in the U.S. (used in all three, Aurora movie theater, Sandy Hook Elementary, and PULSE nightclub shootings). 
Crying time has to come to an end - instead, we all need to decide whether we want to accept those type of mass shootings as a daily, weekly, or monthly routine, in order to fully cherish our constitutional right to bear arms, or whether we are willing to limit access to guns and/or other military style weapons for the greater good and safety of our people. 
While in 2012 I cried over the senseless shooting of innocent children, teachers, and movie goers, last year, I cried over the latest terrorist hate crime mass killing in Orlando ... and in my pain, I asked:  
What will it take????
Stop this tragic cycle - Don't just cry, pray, feel better, and then wait for the next mass shooting to happen again, but instead come out and take action so that these killings will stop being a bloody routine in America!  Keep in mind that you may be the victim of the next mass shooting...
Don't be part of the problem, be part of the solution, take action ... 
 
We're all in this together...

Rafa.



Rafael A. Velasquez, J.D.
for Miami Beach Commission (Group 2)
cell. 305-303-9098

rafaformiamibeach.com

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