BY MATT SALIS

The proliferation of smartphones has sparked meaningful debate about the pros and cons of social media, and about the lack if interpersonal communication skills of our teenagers. There is no argument, however, about the increased connectedness the technology enables between parents and their high school children. That part is great, right? It is great until you see the smartphone video from the Valentine’s Day massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School. The pictures are not as chilling and vile as the popping sounds of rapidly fired bullets from the killer’s assault rifle.

Smartphone technology also brought Rebecca Hogg a text message from fourteen-year-old daughter, Lauren. The message read, “Code Red. Active shooter at school.” Mother and daughter exchanged messages of love for each other, then Lauren’s phone battery died leaving Rebecca assuming that her daughter was dead. As unimaginably horrific as that experience was for Rebecca Hogg, she was lucky that day as Lauren and her older brother, David, survived yet another school mass shooting tragedy. Seventeen others did not.

Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. The second amendment to the Constitution guarantees us the right to bear arms. If bad people can’t buy guns legally, they will find a way to buy them illegally. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families. True. All true. And yet, our children are still dying the most senseless and tragic deaths.

This is not an article railing against the NRA or the congressional Republicans. I argue that the single greatest threat to our democracy is not South Korea, Russia or the instability of our president. It is not gun violence in our schools, either. The single greatest threat to our comfort and prosperity is polarization. Therefore, I’m not going to accuse supporters of the second amendment of being complicit in the murder of children, and I’m not going to lump responsible gun owners in the trash heap of society’s deranged deviants. That sentiment might be supported by many Americans, and lots of my neighbors who live just a few miles from Columbine, but fueling the already white-hot fire of gun control legislation activists does nothing but fortify the entrenchment of second amendment supporters. There are plenty of articles out there that call gun rights activists child killers. Shouting insults might ease just the tiniest bit of the pain, but it has no hope of solving the problem.

Instead, I hope to attract the attention of my neighbors who feel like I used to feel for the majority of my adult life. Like most Americans, I had legislative priorities that were reflected in my voting record. I believed nothing to be more important than balancing our national budget and reducing the debt that will surely cripple future American generations. Deficit reduction has long been a staple issue in the Republican platform (despite no recent evidence of their ability to achieve that goal), so I voted Republican. Like many Americans, I am a fiscal conservative and social moderate, so I held my nose about the social positions of conservatives and cast my ballots on fiscal issues.

As a result, I voted for a whole bunch of people who have received a whole bunch of campaign funding from the NRA. The amounts are not insignificant. They are easily enough to make rational, smart people make legislative decisions that support the mission of the National Rifle Association. I am not going to list the names and dollar amounts as that information is readily available and ever changing, and I am trying not to fuel the partisan fire. Rather, I choose to believe that Republican legislators looked at NRA money as a necessary evil to get elected and re-elected in order to do good in other areas. It is much like when I watch Senators who I believe to be intelligent suck-up to our president. They do it, I believe, because they have figured out that heaping unjustified praise on him guarantees that he will sign anything they put in front of him. It is just a very unsavory part of the game. Taking money from the NRA is just part of that disgusting game, too. If you want someone to rail against John McCain, open your browser and be overwhelmed by the volume of articles that will do just that. Increasing the canyon of polarization won’t solve the problem. It won’t get the guns out of the hands of the radical and mentally unstable. It won’t protect our children.

If the shock and deep sadness at the murder of 20 first graders at Sandy Hook in 2012 was not enough to stimulate change, how can we expect this massacre in Parkland to make an impact? Maybe it will have the cumulative effect of causing people to change their legislative priorities like I did several years ago. Maybe people who believe in limited government and economic growth through business deregulation will put those issues behind saving the lives of our children and cast votes for politicians who are not beholden to the NRA – even if the political platforms and ideals of those politicians go against all of our other priorities. I am talking about voting for candidates who we view as bad for the economy or our liberty because they will vote to ban assault rifles, enforce strict background checks and waiting periods and take other common sense steps to protect our school children.

Public support for gun control reform is strong, but it is only a part of the package when we consider who we trust with our vote. When candidates support our positions on most of the issues, but then take money from the NRA to help them get elected, they often still get our votes because they are the candidates with whom we most closely align. Only when we make gun control reform — banning assault rifles and other common sense measures — our absolute top priority when selecting candidates will we effect real change. Only when we refuse to vote for candidates who take money from the NRA regardless of their positions on other issues can we feel like we are doing what we can as concerned citizens to save the lives of our children.

My wife is the director of children’s ministry at Wash Park United Methodist Church a few blocks from South High School. On November 7th of this past year, some of my daughter’s South High classmates ran into the church seeking safety when the school went on lockdown because of a gun on campus. While my wife and her co-workers provided refuge for panicked teenagers, all she could think about was our daughter locked in the school with a shooter. Students watched in terror as Denver police cars raced across the front lawn of the school to gain entry as quickly as possible.

It was eventually determined that a student brought a BB gun to school. But for a few traumatic minutes, we feared Denver South High School was under siege and would share a tragic history with Columbine, Sandy Hook and the many others schools who have suffered child massacres. For a few traumatic minutes, we thought our lives were over and nothing else would ever again matter.

I don’t know if banning assault rifles will end the school mass shootings. I don’t know if waiting periods and background checks will end the tragic madness. What I know is that saving the children trumps everything else, so I will vote for anyone who brings solutions to the table instead of thoughts and prayers and deposit slips from the NRA.

If you are a fiscal conservative like me and roughly 100 million voting age Americans, you have to ask yourself only one question before you cast your next ballot. If the smartphone video from the Valentine’s Day massacre complete with the rapid-fire popping sounds was shot in our Wash Park neighborhood — if you received a text like the one Rebecca Hogg received from Lauren, “Code Red. Active shooter at school.” — if you lost the thing you love the very most — if someone murdered the reason you live — would you care about the composition of the Supreme Court or the legislative spending excesses? Would you ever care about anything political again? For me, for all my Wash Park neighbors I know and love, nothing matters more than our kids. Vote like our children’s lives depend on it before that text message is sent to you.