Have we at long last begun the end to senseless gun violence?

In July 1969, a full-page ad in the Sunday  N.Y. Times posed a request to the American public:

Hold onto this page for 1 year and hope and pray it’s ended.

The hopeful ad  appeared  one  year after the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and 6 years after the shooting  of President John Kennedy. The copy reads:

  The trouble is hoping and praying isn’t enough

Violence won’t end unless you’re willing

to start the ending.

I have held onto to this yellowing page for nearly 50 years, the hope for the end of gun violence  nearly extinguished.

After the energy, passion and commitment of today’s youth to end gun violence powerfully demonstrated this past weekend in the hundreds of March For Our Lives rallies that took place across the country and across the globe,  a glimmer of hope has finally been ignited.

Perhaps they have started the ending. Let’s all hope so.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2018