“Are you concerned? What will you do to save this country from internal terrorism?”

Yesterday, August 29, 2023, two dear friends phoned, traumatized, in tears, tears of terror.

One, held captive with her entire family, by any news of her grandson, a newly arrived freshman at University of North Carolina, trapped in an adjoining building while a murderer killed a faculty member with a weapon meant for the battlefields. Lock down. Terror. An endless cycle of gun violence at our universities. How do we see this ending?

The second, terrified every single day by the menace of an elderly relative with a cache of unsecured, deadly weapons and ammunition in her home. Her weeping protests for her young child’s safety are met with a rageful, uneducated lecture on the Second Amendment. How do we see this ending?

Young people increasingly choosing any profession rather than law enforcement as they would stand in the line of fire of any one of the 400 million firearms in this once safe Nation. Google Law Enforcement Shortage. How do we see this ending?

The United States is hemorrhaging educators, literally. The determination to dismantle the public education system, to raise a generation of indoctrinated, terrorized children and their teachers, where daily drills to protect against the inevitability of their school becoming a war zone is REAL. Our little children and our children doing their very best to “adult,” can’t even go to school, to church, to the movies, or the mall without the vulnerability of terror and the very real possibility of being murdered. Even students coming from other nations to be educated here are in danger and have been assassinated. How do we see this ending?

In a nation where all of our citizens are trapped in a web of ideology, supported by 400 Million weapons, an ever enriched munitions industry, a deadly force of legislators bribed by lobbyists, how do we see this ending?

Citizens United and the destruction of the Fairness Doctrine have insured unlimited power to those who would destroy our “One Nation Under God.” How do we see this ending?

Are you concerned? What will you do to save this country from internal terrorism?

A Deeply Concerned American Citizen, Lewellen Daniel Padgett