Reactions to the massacre that killed 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida are understandably heated. Those with a platform are using it to speak their opinions of problem that’s seemingly unsolvable, possibly because there are deeper causes than simply “guns” but also because lawmakers have seemingly refused to take action, and voters aren’t yet holding them accountable. This morning, Kelly Ripa didn’t feel the need to hold back, despite knowing that people might say, “Oh, you’re a talk show host, shut up.”
Ripa dismissed that prospective criticism while reminding her viewers that she’s a mother of three school-aged children, who were so afraid to enter their own school that “I had to talk my kids off a ledge this morning.” She’s also had enough of “thoughts and prayers” habitually issued in times like these, and when co-host Ryan Seacrest asked Ripa how she helped calm her children, she said that they’re as prepared as they can be with the tragic reality of “active shooter drills” being commonplace now. Yet Ripa feels that it’s truly time to for the U.S. to accept that this issue isn’t going away:
“The fact that our country has such unparalleled mass shooter violence is staggering to me. Somebody needs to have a conversation that is larger than in this moment. And again, I just say it as a concerned citizen and human being that something needs to change. There needs to be a bigger, better dialogue because we are failing in this area … and offering thoughts and prayers are not enough anymore.”
Ripa continued to say that this is also an impossible situation for parents, who obviously want to reassure their children that “this is never going to happen” at more schools, yet parents are consistently proven wrong in that department. As Ripa puts it, “You start to feel like a liar, and I don’t like feeling that way.”