Congress

Michigan Mom's Photo of Preschooler Practicing for Lockdown Drill Goes Viral

The Michigan mom went on to talk about how the photo speaks to the issue of gun control currently sweeping the nation

What one mother said first seemed like an adorable photo of her young preschooler being “mischievous,” quickly turned into a wake-up call for many.

Stacey Wehrman Feeley took a photo of her 3-year-old daughter standing on a toilet at first because she “thought it was funny,” she wrote in a now-viral Facebook post.

The photo shows the little girl in a bright dress standing on a toilet with her arm against the wall.

“The moment she told me what she was doing I broke down,” Feeley wrote. “She was practicing for a lockdown drill at her preschool and what you should do if you are stuck in a bathroom. At that moment all innocense [sic] of what I thought my three-year-old possessed was gone.”

The Michigan mom went on to talk about how the photo speaks to the issue of gun control currently sweeping the nation.

“Politicians - take a look,” she wrote. "This is your child, your children, your grandchildren, your great grand children [sic] and future generations to come. They will live their lives and grow up in this world based on your decisions. They are barely 3 and they will hide in bathroom stalls standing on top of toilet seats.”

The post has since been shared more than 22,800 times and received nearly as many likes.

Just over a week after the massacre at an Orlando nightclub, gun control has been at the forefront of a national debate.

Most recently, a divided Senate voted down four gun control measures proposed from both sides. Monday's votes came after Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., led a near 15-hour filibuster last week demanding a Senate response to the Orlando killings. Murphy entered the Senate shortly after the December 2012 massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, but that slaughter and others have failed to spur Congress to tighten gun curbs. The last were enacted in 2007, when the background check system was strengthened after that year's mass shooting at Virginia Tech. 

“I am not pretending to have all the answers or even a shred of them, but unless you want your children standing on top of a toilet, we need to do something,” Feeley wrote.

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