by Anna Leach

A few days over a month after the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, CN, the public is still buzzing about the use of firearms and protection measures to ensure nothing like it ever happens again. As it should be. The shooting should and will not be a blip and time, and people are recognizing this. There’s no shortage of energy.

Around the country, individuals have spoken out against the use and availability of assault weapons. Both celebrities and those not in the limelight have shared their opinions, some as bluntly as Dax Shepard’s tweet “I love guns. I have several, but I would gladly get rid of them if it would help prevent anything like this from happening again,” others spreading photos and infographics discussing the relationship between easy access of firearms and high number death involving them.

Unlike with the Colorado shooting this summer, people are calling for change, not just expressing sympathy. “David G’s” online petition outlining regulation of assault weapons and artillery capacity gained more than 25,000 electronic signatures within a couple of hours, breaking White House sponsored website “We the People”’s signatures record. Groups banded together within days of the shooting as plans for protests in Washington, DC, such as “Million Kids March” emerged from the social media voice. According to social analytics service Topsy, “gun control” was mentioned over 80,000 times on Twitter Dec. 14 and the National Rifle Association (NRA) got 23,000 mentions the following Friday when the National Rifle Association armed guards in schools.

This Sandy Hook shooting has broken the barrier of desensitization to violence. Even within Kansas City, where over 80 percent of the homicides in 2012 involved guns, headlines have come up over and over to very little, if any, action in response. But there was a distinct change in attitude this time as the public has demanded preventative measures that will protect the right to safety, especially in public places. Maybe because people have been reaching out to social media resources more aggressively than ever. Maybe because this was just the last straw in the line of public shootings over the last couple of months. Maybe because the majority of bystanders that ended up dead were children this time.

The obvious result, though, is emotions are flying everywhere, and this demand for response to the public will is a trend that needs to continue. Be passionate because the need to keep another event like Sandy Hook from happening ever again is worth the energy.

All these feelings must be channeled to positive determination, if anything is to be done.  Now more than ever, we must talk to each other and back peace and education instead of aggression and violence. There’s no time to get wrapped up in personal politics. This cause, people’s lives and safety, is so far beyond that. Beyond politicians, beyond grudges, beyond, even, a single individual’s involvement. It’s about working together toward a society we want to live in as a body of people, as a country.

Which, I freely admit, will not be an easy task. And the predicted result will probably bounce back and forth and be ripped to shreds before anything major happens.

But all that effort means discussion is happening, that the county is on the way to some sort of consensus. As long as we keep the energy and an eye on the prize, peaceful safety with respectful remembrance, we’ll move forward. And forward is the only way we should be going.