Reflection on Texas school shooting from my Autistic perspective

Trigger warning: mass shooting, school shooting, murder, death of children and adults.

Today I woke up to the news that 19 children and two adults had been murdered in cold blood. This grotesque reality is a fear that parents in the US live with every single day.

Every time they send their child to school, they have to wonder if that kiss goodbye is the final kiss.

What of the bed sheets that will never be slept in again? Do their rooms become a mausoleum regret and indescribable pain? Do we just stand in silence while the United States of America, the supposed land of the free, is victimised by a gun lobby that cares more about its right to carry an instrument of death, than the death that is being inflicted upon the innocent?

When will the world step up and say enough? Sadly, I suspect not today.

My Autistic heart is broken. The shattered pieces speak of pain, and yet my pain is nothing compared to that of the parents who will never hold their children again.

Will we allow the memory of those whose lives have been stolen to be tarnished by those who would have you believe that gun control is not the answer? I say no. Blood is on the hands of the American gun lobby. The time has come for them to repay the lives they have stolen with their indiscriminate and misinformed campaign of death.

For the memory of those who are gone too soon, we must fight this campaign of terror, and say “no more”.

Not one more life can be taken.