Another Day, Another School Shooting
This isn’t the first time I’ve written this article, and it won’t be the last.
As I opened the window to write this post, I felt an overwhelming sense of deja vu. I feel like I’ve written this post before, in February of 2018 after the Parkland Shooting. I’m sharing many of my thoughts from that day below, because they still apply. Nothing has changed. They’ll continue to apply and I’ll continue to hate posting about this. In the past 22 months, there have been 39 school shootings in the United States where people were injured. In six of them, more than 3 people were injured. 32 people have died.
Policy makers either didn’t listen, or didn’t care enough to do anything to stop this from happening over and over and over again.
This morning, a 15-year-old boy opened fire at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Last year, students from this very school walked out of class in protest of our country’s commitment to doing utterly nothing to save our children. Unfortunately, policy makers either didn’t listen, or didn’t care enough to do anything to stop this from happening over and over and over again.
2.14.18
I regret opening CNN.com even as I type the address into the browser. I regret it as it loads. I regret it as I read the headlines:
Trump pledges to ‘ease pain’ but offers few specifics
President says no one should feel in danger at school, but does not mention gun control
There are bodies still inside the school
School massacre: 17 dead after gunman targets former school
19 of the 30 deadliest mass shootings have taken place in the last decade
I already gave up on the paper, the article describing parent after parent receiving terrified texts from their high school children. Still, I can’t think about anything else. I try to work, but it’s hard. This is a national tragedy. An epidemic. A nightmare. I open a dozen tabs, each article spinning and loading, waiting for me.
This is a national tragedy. An epidemic. A nightmare.
I will work my way through the articles one by one. I will look at the photos and obsess. I will cry and rage and when I feel nauseated I will look away, but not for long. My heart will creak and buckle in disbelief as I read tweets and firsthand accounts and watch video footage, deafening gunshots ringing as terrified children hide under their desks and hope they aren’t next. My soul clenches in on itself as I watch an ex-FBI agent cry on national television, pleading with anyone who will listen: “We cannot accept this.”
A part of me will always wonder why I am doing this to myself.
Despite that wondering, I will keep looking because my reaction is human and it is right. This is enraging and sickening. There is no excuse. I will keep looking because no matter how awful this information makes me feel, it is nothing compared to the feelings of the hundreds of people who had the worst day of their life yesterday. I will keep looking because I am trying to understand something that cannot be understood.
So much of the coverage from Parkland, Florida is numbingly similar to Columbine, Virginia Tech, and numerous other shooting sites. We’re all too accustomed to seeing videos of students fleeing campus; interviews with eyewitnesses; reunions with parents.
But we’re not used to being transported to the crime scene through the cell phone cameras of the victims. This is new and blood-curdling.
In one video clip, we see that some students had to walk by several lifeless bodies while being evacuated from the building.
In another clip, we hear gunshots and screams, then more gunshots, more screams.
Perhaps these up-close views — through the eyes of the victims — will force Americans to see these shootings in a new way. Perhaps.
CNN and other television networks showed a video that a student took from the floor of his classroom, capturing the sound of the gunfire. Anchors warned viewers in advance that the content was disturbing.
“This is what kids and their teachers went through. This is how it looked, how it sounded and how it felt for them,” Savannah Guthrie said on NBC’s “Today” show Thursday morning. source:cnn.com
This is a new brand of news. Screenshots of texts — a girl texting her sister — call 911, call mom and dad, send help. Telling her that she loves her, to please tell their parents she loves them. Teenagers live-tweeting the most terrifying day of their lives. Snapchat videos from inside the school, gunshots louder than I could have imagined. Video of children weeping as SWAT enters their classroom with guns.
I vacillate wildly between anger and despair, rage and complete heartbreak, and when I feel like I might vomit, I minimize the window, and then I feel lucky that I can even do that because it wasn’t my child — not this time. And then that thought makes me want to vomit all over again.
I would gladly give up any one of my hobbies if it would contribute to children staying alive.
Like every time, Facebook will be full of arguments about guns and about people’s rights. With this argument, I am just done. Fuck the NRA. Fuck your “right to bear arms.” Fuck allowing people to own guns they never use and never need. Fuck having guns just for fun to shoot at targets. You know what is more important than you having the privilege of a hobby? Literal human lives. I would gladly give up any one of my hobbies if it would contribute to children staying alive.
A woman named Carrie Schreck posts this status on Facebook:
Let’s take a moment to honor the sacrifice of our brave schoolchildren who lay down their lives to protect our right to bear arms.
It goes viral because it’s true. And if your first reaction is to bristle and somehow defend your guns or say that this isn’t true? You are part of the problem.
Children are dying. Consistently. Constantly.
So, kindly retract your arguments that people always kill people, that there is still the black market, that people can probably 3-D print a gun. So. Fucking. What? That doesn’t mean that restricting guns won’t help. It’s not an either/or situation. If guns aren’t the problem, then how come America is the only country where this is happening? We have 4.4% of the world’s population and over 40% of the world’s guns. That is the only difference. That seems to point to a really big problem that has a lot to do with all these guns.
Shifting our culture’s focus from “people deserve to have their guns” to “people deserve to keep their lives” could start a serious shift in paradigm.
It’s time to re-think the argument that we need to start somewhere else. We need to try. Restricting guns would buy us time to deal with other issues. Not only that, but shifting our culture’s focus from “people deserve to have their guns” to “people deserve to keep their lives” could start a serious shift in paradigm.
Civility and rationality seem unimportant in the wake of waves of dead children, crashing over us like a nightmare that won’t end. My question is simple. Do you value your right to own a gun over my child’s life?
How dare you? How dare you try to convince me of your right to bear arms when there are 17 sets of parents who will never wrap their arms around their children again? How dare you tell me that you deserve to own a gun because it’s fun when there are parents in Florida right this second whose children’s cold, lifeless bodies still lie in the halls of their high school?
Do you value your right to own a gun over my child’s life?
How dare our politicians blame “gaps” in gun laws and mental illness? In Florida, a license isn’t even required to purchase a semi-automatic weapon. How dare they pretend to care only when the blood of 17 kids soaks their home soil?
My mom comments on one of the many posts I share (my Facebook feed will be full with this) and she says what we should all be thinking:
There really is no moral ambiguity. It’s inexcusable that we are not protecting our children.
Our babies are dying. Twice a month, in the U.S., an institution of learning where our children are supposed to be children, becomes an institution of terror.
Today, instead of the hot, desperate, sickening overwhelm I felt on the day of the Parkland shooting, I feel mostly angry and frustrated. I don’t want to be writing this article again. Tears don’t come, and I realize with disgust that it is partially because only two people have died. Only three people are in the hospital. This time it wasn’t that bad.
How is this a distinction that I’m capable of making, and that is required of me? That I am relieved that only one family’s worst nightmare is coming true? It has become so commonplace that when there are fewer deaths, it feels less bad somehow. It’s reprehensible. I can’t help but wonder if and when it might be my turn. Ryan Moreno, whose daughter attends Saugus High, said:
You see this on TV, what goes on in other states and you’re always thinking it’s tragedy, it’s sad but it’s never going to happen here. When it happens here, it hits home. You understand and realize what it’s like for all the parents who go through it. It’s not fun, it’s scary, especially if you can’t get a hold of your kid.
Each time it happens, the thought moves from the back of my mind to the front, and my insides quiver with the inability to grasp it. I could be next. My child could be next.
We are failing our children. Miserably.
It is time for us to come together. I’m not pro gun, but if you are, I’m willing to talk about it. We need to join forces to stop this from happening. Reasonable, level-headed, responsible gun supporters need to push their legislators to make changes to make things safer. If banning guns isn’t the answer, then we need people who own guns to come up with some other options and elect people who will support those options. It’s imperative we work together to figure out how to prevent these things from happening anymore.
I could go on for 50 more sentences, 100 more paragraphs, 10,000 more words. I could write until my fingers cramped and my body was dehydrated. And I would be no closer to understanding, no less heartbroken, frustrated, or angry. So I will stop and try to think about something else, despite the futility.
This isn’t the first time I’ve written this post, and it won’t be the last. I leave you with this: we are failing our children. Miserably. And until something changes, there will always be another one.
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