Governor Abbott, Release the Uvalde 911 Tapes.

At the very least transcripts need to be made public, and every single lawmaker should be forced to listen.

Photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash

I was a senior in High School when the shooting took place at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. I remember logging onto the computer after getting home from school that afternoon, begrudgingly deciding I should get a head start on my paper before I spent the coming Saturday Christmas shopping. Of course, the first thing that popped up when I opened my browser was news that over 20 children had been slaughtered in their classroom, ages 6 and 7.

Like so many of us find ourselves doing in these circumstances when we really don’t know what else to do, I called my Mom.

I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking. After hanging up the phone I turned on the news, sat down on the couch, and did my best to catch my breath as I started to cry.

The atmosphere in school was certainly different that following Monday, but nothing else has really changed almost ten years later, has it? The slaughter of 20 children and their teachers was not enough to get our lawmakers to enact even the most common sense of gun legislation, and so — as mass shooting after mass shooting continues to occur — can we really be surprised…