Forty-three years ago, my father was shot and killed by a robber with a handgun while walking his dog a block from his home in San Francisco. My mother was with him and saw him go down. I could well have lost both my parents to the sudden, senseless violence that took a wonderful husband, father and grandfather from his beloved family and from the community at large.
The impact has followed all of us all these years. It never goes away. There still is rarely a day when my dad’s loss doesn’t come to mind. How different our family would have been if not for that one little bullet. I worked for many years for gun control, but only now, after the tragic school shootings, do I see just a glimmer of hope that the day will come when ordinary Americans can do ordinary things without worrying that they will not make it home alive.