Stevie Nicks joined the countless Democratic politicians, gun control advocates and fellow musicians in the fight to end gun violence and strengthen gun laws in the United States on Wednesday (June 1), sharing a statement in response to the devastating mass shooting at an Uvalde, Texas, elementary school that killed 19 children and 2 adults.
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“My hope for this country is that the lawmakers just find a way to make buying an assault rifle ~ more difficult,” the Fleetwood Mac singer wrote in a lengthy message posted to Twitter. “There is just no reason to have a gun that would disintegrate a deer~ or a small animal, if you are, indeed, an honorable hunter. When those guns go into the hands of obviously disturbed people, it gives them a sense of unbelievable power that they have never felt before. Power, used in a bad way, is the opposite of ‘power’ used in a good way. Once people have felt the power of those guns, they are never the same. They are addicted. And then there is no turning back.”
She urged lawmakers to “make it really hard for them to get that gun,” adding, “No one is trying to take away guns from people who get them for a good reason. Guns are not toys. Background checks are not that hard.”
Nicks went on to share that she’s “dying inside” for the victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting. “So, I ask you; do you want to go down in the history books as being responsible for these school shootings that will inevitably continue, or do you want to be remembered as the people who finally gathered together in unity and empathy ~ as the people who stopped it,” she wrote.
The “Edge of Seventeen” singer then revealed her father’s favorite quote, which was “Sometimes the hardest thing to do is the right thing to do~ and sometimes the right thing to do ~ is the hardest thing to do.”
“And then he would say~ Be brave, Stevie, always. Do the right thing. Never compromise your beliefs,” she wrote. “If I had gone to school one day when I was ten~ and been shot; my little body destroyed, I think my father would have done the same thing that that lovely teacher’s husband did. Gone home, sat down in a chair~ and died… of a broken heart.”
“I am just so sad….” Nicks concluded.
— Stevie Nicks (@StevieNicks) June 1, 2022
The massacre of innocent children on May 24 came 10 days after an heavily armed 18-year-old white supremacist opened fire and allegedly killed 10 people in a Buffalo, New York supermarket where he reportedly went to specifically target and murder Black shoppers.
On the same day as Nicks’ post, multiple people were killed in a shooting on a hospital campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Authorities responded to a call about a man who was armed with a rifle at the Natalie Medical Building, according to a Facebook post from the Tulsa Police Department and as reported by CNN.