Terrence McLaughlin Professor John Doorley Strategic Writing 20 January 2016 Assignment #3: Op-Ed
Living, but Not Breathing As they sat in the living room of their split-level ranch in rural Connecticut, Mark and Jackie Barden celebrated Mother’s Day in silence. While two of their children remained at school, the grieving parents rummaged through some old family photos together, only releasing a few sighs and soft murmurs. Earlier that morning, Mark had gone through whatever images he had saved on his computer. He printed the few that he had found, brought them upstairs from the basement, and placed them on a coffee table adjacent to the family’s velvet sofa.
On this foggy May afternoon, the couple had to select a photo of their deceased 7-year-old son Daniel. The photo was to be featured on a collaborative Mother’s Day card that the Barden’s and 19 other families were creating and eventually sending to lawmakers in every office of the U.S. Capitol Building.
The purpose of the card was to beseech lawmakers in Washington to look into the eyes of children who had fallen victim to an unimaginable act of gun violence. Previously, the Barden’s had walked through the halls of the Capitol, personally distributing hundreds of glossy photographs that pictured their red-headed son. They pleaded to those who would listen that congressional action on the matter of gun safety was of the utmost importance. However, since his death five months earlier, no progress had been made.
The story behind Daniel’s death is one that families across America know all too well. Daniel Barden, along with his 19 classmates, sat in their first-grade classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School on the morning of December 14, 2012. At 9:36 am, the class was interrupted by a popping noise coming from the end of school corridor. Daniel’s teacher huddled him and his classmates to the back corner of the once colorful classroom, where they were pinned against each other with no place to run. Adam Lanza, a stranger to the class, barged into the
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