We stared.

We watched our little girls as they skipped into school in their sparkly headbands and princess sneakers, backpacks banging against the backs of their legs because they themselves were so tiny. We watched our boys at their basketball games, forgetting the scoreboard and just watching them, their knobby knees and puppy energy, their exuberant fist-bumps and crooked grins.

We held them on our laps until they protested, pulled them close until they gave us funny looks. When we hugged them, we could feel their tiny shoulder blades; it was like hugging a fairy.

We were struck by how big they wanted to be, and how small and fragile they really were.

And we tried to figure out what to do -- what to do about gun violence in America.

*  * *

Judging from some news outlets, you might have thought there were only two choices, each on furthest outposts of the spectrum: a) arming every man, woman and child to the teeth with as much hardcore weaponry as possible, or b) piling every single gun in America onto the USS Kum-Ba-Yah and sinking it at sea under a wreath of daisies.

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