270 Reasons: Because She Supports a Ban on Assault Weapons

Our friends at 270 Reasons are gathering a polyphonic orchestra of brilliant writers, teachers, doctors, filmmakers, artists, and citizens of all kinds to weigh in about their plans to vote this November. These opinion essays run the gamut from advocacy for basic human rights to acutely personal mini-manifestoes. Read the rest over at 270 Reasons.

Because She Supports a Ban on Assault Weapons

My children were six and four years old in 2012, when Sandy Hook occurred. I was horrified to see children, around the same age as my own children, killed. My own children grew up in the age of lockdown drills. They’ve become so desensitized to mass shootings that when another one occurs, they no longer seem shocked by it. When another one occurs, I’m no longer sure that they will even hear about it. They have become used to living in fear so that they have become numb to fear. Perhaps it’s not that they no longer care, but that gun violence has become routine, like the weather. It just happens.

It’s hard to believe that Sandy Hook was twelve years ago. It’s hard to believe that some of the survivors of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting are graduating from high school this year. It’s hard to believe that since 2020, this country’s mass shootings (often defined as four or more people killed) have only grown. In fact, mass shootings in 2023 were the second highest (after 2021). This year is no better.

I’m voting for Kamala Harris for president for many reasons, but I support Harris because she’s been vocal about gun violence and supports a ban on assault weapons, as well as expanding background checks. I still remember the horror of Sandy Hook. Every mass shooting should evoke the same horror today. I want to live in a country where my children and future children don’t have to live in fear, and even worse, don’t have to become numb to their own fears. What happens when a society becomes numb to such horrors? More of the same horrors. Although my kids, like the Sandy Hook children, are nearly grown, I believe that Harris, if elected, will make real change in gun laws that I’ve been waiting for.

Victoria Chang is a poet, Bourne Chair in Poetry, and director of Poetry@Tech at Georgia Tech.

Read more essays (with new ones added every day) at 270reasons.com.

The arguments here represent the opinion of the authors and not necessarily those of the McSweeney’s Literary Arts Fund.