Top: Memorial Day visitors in 2021 at Fort Snelling National Cemetery – Pioneer Press. Bottom: Orange marigolds represent Wear Orange Day remembering victims of gun violence.
The orange hunting vest hanging in my basement hasn’t been used in years. Alongside hangs another vest, khaki-colored, its ammo pockets still holding shotgun shells, 20-guage, no. 6. They’ve been there for years, probably since the last time I went pheasant hunting with our golden retriever at the time, Molly.
A new opportunity to wear an orange vest crops up Friday, June 5, not long after Memorial Day. Over Memorial Day weekend, when we honor the memory of American military veterans, millions of Americans will be enjoying a holiday.
On National Gun Violence Awareness Day June 5, many others will be remembering the nearly 130 people shot and killed by gun violence every day in the United States. If there is a common denominator between the two, it’s the means of the killing.
It’s a bit ironic that the color orange coincides with the made-up complexion of a person who exploits gun violence and benefits politically in support from gun rights fanatics. Orange in a better light can be found at wearorange.org. Wear Orange originated on June 2, 2015 — what would have been Hadiya Pendleton’s 18th birthday.
“On Jan. 21, 2013, Hadiya marched in President Obama’s second inaugural parade. One week later, Hadiya was shot and killed on a playground in Chicago. Soon after this tragedy, Hadiya’s friends commemorated her life by wearing orange, the color hunters wear in the woods to protect themselves and others.”
Constitutional distortion
We greatly appreciate the Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment. Yet, most reasonable Americans would acknowledge the vast distortion between the constitutional right to bear arms, and the deadly level to which that now exists. I am content to have a single-shot, 20-gauge shotgun, and a single-shot .22 caliber rifle. I have no use for a handgun or AR-15.
In a debate I would be rolled over by the legal arguments and syrupy rhetoric of the folks at the National Rifle Association and their adherents. If aware of my arsenal, they would sneer in ridicule at someone so armed against an intruder. Their lawyer-speak about the constitution supporting silencers, conceal-and-carry, and high-capacity weapons would leave me blubbering.
I would accept that debate outcome on one condition: That they took the time to actually listen to and show compassion for the parents of school children murdered at – where should we start? – 32 in 2007 at Virginia Tech; 28 in 2012 at Sandy Hook; 22 in 2022 at Uvalde, Texas; 18 in 2018 at Parkland, FL; 16 in 1966 at Austin, TX; … the scroll down bar on the Wikipedia list had hardly moved.
Assault weapons
All of the arguments about mental health, school security, and background checks fail to compensate for the simple fact that firearms beyond those needed for gun sports and hobbies should be banned or tightly regulated. I fail to completely understand the thought – or lack of it – behind the desire to own an AR-15 or something similar.
Perhaps I could walk ¼-mile down the road and ask one of my neighbors. I enjoy being outside, working in the garden, reading on the deck. Then I hear the loud gunshots coming from somewhere behind his house. Although just target shooting, the racket and politics behind it disturb our otherwise peaceful and quiet neighborhood.
I wonder what he would say if I asked him what he thought about the Aug. 27, 2025, assault-weapon attack killing two students at Annunciation School in Minneapolis, or the long list mentioned above. Some responses that I have heard remind me of another experience, with an unrelated topic but similar logic, involving attitudes about nitrogen fertilizer and farming.
I was hosting a meeting that included discussion on health hazards of nitrates in groundwater. Studies showed an increase in “blue baby” syndrome, where excessive nitrates in groundwater could be fatal to infants. A man in the audience asked ‘what’s the problem with losing a few babies’ compared with too much regulation of fertilizer use. I reprimanded him for his comment, and others concurred. That twisted logic underlies arguments for allowing assault weapons.
Clear cause-and-effect
Once again, Republicans in the Minnesota legislature prevented the state from joining 11 other states that ban assault-style weapons. At the end of the session Minnesota House Republicans stifled a vote on HF 5140, that if enacted into law would regulate “the ownership, possession, and sale of semiautomatic military-style assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.”
The Republicans offered the same old arguments that “removing guns wouldn’t solve the problem, given the availability of deadly weapons of other forms, and stressed the need to protect Americans’ Second Amendment right to bear arms.” You can check up on gun laws for all states at Giffords Law Center or Everytown’s Assault Weapons Policy Tracker.
There is a clear cause-and-effect between the increases in mass shootings and number of assault weapons in the U.S. In her book, The Gunning of America – Business and the Making of American Gun Culture, Pamela Haag “shows how gun industrialists worked their sales savvy over the decades to find and create new markets for their product.” Read more in the 2022 Time magazine story, “The Inside History of How Guns Are Marketed and Sold in America.”
Driving through a local cemetery on Memorial Day you will see many grave markers adorned with little American flags. Fields of flags will flutter among the thousands of grave markers at military cemeteries. Perhaps we could start a new memorial tradition to follow a week later, by placing orange flowers such as marigolds on all the markers of gun violence victims.
The greatest irony is that many of those who are remembered on Memorial Day, gave their lives in defense of our Constitution and all that it stands for, which now is being used to allow unfettered use of assault weapons that leads to a greater number of lives being remembered on Wear Orange Day.
