Same headline, different decade

In looking through old family papers, I found this one from the Sunday Daily News (Long Island’s newspaper). My parents saved this clipping because it featured my mother as part of Mah Jong’s Chinese New Year promo for the Year of the Dragon. She is pictured with Mah Jong chef, Woo Ming, holding up a sample of the new year’s banquet.

I only recently read the front page headline, “Demands U.S. Acts on Guns”. This was from February 2, 1964 and it reported that Kings District Attorney Edward Silver was going to get Congress to act “affirmatively and promptly” on proposed legislation to prevent interstate shipment of firearms as well as hand guns, rifles, and shotguns. This was sparked by the slaying of two detectives during a robbery at the Boro Park Tobacco Company in Brooklyn, NY on May 18, 1962.

So here we are. 60 years later in 2022…..and our headlines are the same. We are still advocating for tighter gun control laws in this country. Will we ever make meaningful progress during a political era that is so divisive? Are we doomed to rinse and repeat this headline for another six decades?

It is up to us to make this madness stop.