'Are our children free? Are you free?'

What words are there? Not one word will return those boys and girls, those brave teachers, to the arms of their mothers.
How anguished the mothers of the murdered students must be, knowing their children died alone and terrified. Will they ever sleep again, imagining their children crying for them, mortally wounded with no one to comfort them?
After those little children were slaughtered in their classroom in Sandy Hook, I couldn’t sleep because I could look at the peaceful, sleeping face of my first grader while the women who lost their children could not.
After those babies were murdered in their classrooms surrounded by fingerpaintings and the alphabet, we did nothing.
Nothing.
America stood by and remained silent; it was someone else’s child, the price of freedom, the consequences of a free society.
I would give up my freedom in an instant if it guaranteed no child could be killed in a public school again.
Freedom comes with a price, but it is still my freedom and I don’t want the right to bear arms if it means we must watch children being slaughtered day after day.
Then we are not free.
Our children are living like war-torn Syrians, waiting in fear for their turn to die.
Are our children free?
We wonder every day when we drop them off, are they safe?
We lock them behind glass and metal doors, teach them to hide.
Are they free?
What right do we have to burden them with this fear, or each other, for that matter.
Are you free?
I believe only qualified, trained individuals should have the right to bear arms. People old enough, sane enough and trained enough to know the difference between indiscriminate killing and protecting the life and liberty of those they love and are sworn to protect.
I am a life long patriot. A man in my family has fought in every American war since the Revolution. My father is a West Point graduate, an Army Ranger and a retired lieutenant colonel and I believe in duty, honor, country.
I do not believe my Second Amendment rights are protected by 17 year olds with AR-15 rifles.
We must change our laws.
Thank you.
Aimee Henkel
Warwick