Another Tragedy

Another tragic day. Another fateful night. Another day of national mourning.

By Azher Quader

It was Columbine High School, Colorado, in 1999 which claimed the lives of 12 young people. It was Virginia Tech , Virginia in 2007, where 32 innocent youth  lost their lives to a gunman. It was 2011 when a 9 year old girl was killed in the cross fire  by another trigger happy gunman attempting to murder a politician. Today it was a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado where 13 teenagers  got brutally murdered while watching Batman.  

How many more young  lives are to be lost before we wake up from the nightmare of gun violence? How many more candles are to be blown before our passion for pistols can be extinguished? How much more blood will have to be spilled on the alter of our rights, before our prayers for reason and restraints get answered?

Let those who argue that guns don’t kill explain, how even a mad man armed with a knife or an axe could have caused the kind of horror and havoc that we witnessed Thursday night at the hands of a monstrous human being with a gun in his hand. While the battle over gun control rages on, just as fiercely today as it has done for all these years in America, the clarion call for non violence that gets remade by both preachers and politicians at such times notwithstanding , our sons and daughters  continue to pay the ultimate price with their lives. Sadly there is no reasonable answer for the families and loved ones of those who are dead and gone in one unsuspecting, fleeting moment . So many precious lives, so many hopes and so many dreams are wiped out for ever, so many possibilities never to be realized any more. 

May Allah give patience to the bereaved and  guide our policy makers to see beyond their ideological blinders, the vision of a more peaceful society where  guns of war and weapons of assault belong not in the hands of ordinary citizens but in the hands of those who fight our enemies in wars. This madness must end before more lives are lost.

Azher Quader, Community Builders Chicago (CBC)

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