Yesterday, I wrote to twelve close friends asking them to please sign a petition and forward it to twelve others. I got one reply saying that she’d signed and forwarded it along. The petition simply said “Congress should reinstate the federal ban on assault rifles.”

My daughter Emily’s Sunday evening blog post after the  horrible Orlando tragedy was entitled, “I’m Sorry, But Your Statistics Don’t Matter.” She ends her post with this; “Enough is enough.”  I offered the petition as a way of trying to begin to make the change. She is right, enough is enough, and as her mom, I want to cheer her on.

When Emily was in high school, she’d run in a track meet at Columbine High School. I was sitting in the bleachers with my 13 year old son and my 90 year old grandmother cheering her on. Our lives were affected by that shooting but we’ve had 17 years of tomorrows. The twelve students who died that day only have yesterdays.

It was for those twelve students that I picked twelve people to send the petition to. It is time for a change. If we can’t reinstate the ban on assault weapons, we have to figure out a solution that can be achieved. Maybe we have to ban the ammunition. Let’s figure this out people. Let’s honor the fallen.