My cousin notified me of yesterday's atrocity in southern Florida. Broward County? That's where my sister's family lives and where her kids go to school. I called my sister. "Is that [my nephew]'s school?" "No. His school is in the neighboring district." Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland is eight miles from my sister's house. She described to me scenes of roads packed with cars as parents raced to their kids. Friends of my sister had a son in that school yesterday.
What I described above is as close as I've ever been to a school shooting (I did know a student at Virginia Tech in 2007). I know what's it like to lose a child. I know what it's like for a moral monster to steal half my children's childhoods from me. I know what's it like to be told a friend was murdered with a gun. I've known parents who watched a state trooper pull his car in their driveway and inform them that their child was killed in a car wreck. My guess is that anyone reading this will share some or all of what I've experienced. I suspect there is a reader or two who has been directly affected by a school shooting. I don't know what it's like to send one of my daughters to school and never see her alive again. I hope I never experience such a horror. Any tragedy in my life pales in comparison to a parent sending a child off to school, only to have that child be murdered.
How many dead children are enough? How many people, simply going about their lives, working, playing, etc have to be slaughtered before the needle of sense moves in my country? When do we in the US have our Dunblane? When do we have our Port Arthur? Sandy Hook saw 27 murdered, but that didn't change anything. Last October, 58 people were shot dead in Las Vegas, but that didn't change anything. I couldn't possibly list all the mass shootings in the US because I have to feed my girls dinner in a couple hours. I read yesterday (click here) that we've now had four shootings at middle and high schools in 2018. Yesterday was just the 45th day of the year. Children are taken through "shooter in the building" drills in schools in present day America. My girls never did that during their school year in England.
We are learning about all kinds of mental issues associated with the loathsome individual who destroyed countless lives yesterday. What astounds me is that many of the same people who so ferociously defend our "right" to own and use an AR-15 or a Bushmaster or some other military weapon simultaneously rail against universal health care and more money for mental illness treatment. There are plenty of people with mental issues in countries that have serious gun restrictions. This problems isn't confined to mental issues. The ease of obtaining a weapon that can end many lives in a short time is obscene.
Like many other politicians, President Trump offered "prayers and condolences" yesterday. No matter how good the intentions or how warmed people may be to receive "prayers and condolences," I have to ask, when is that bullshit going to end? When are people going to embrace reality and actually DO something in the here and now? Will it take a politician's kid being murdered to get something done? What if a lobbyist's child gets shot at school? Or a celebrity's kid? Does the death count have to reach triple figures in a massacre to make us think that, perhaps, we don't need assault rifles? Are we going to go nuts in the other direction and have guards armed to the teeth walking down every corridor in every school? I need not insult my readers by detailing the absurdity of that scenario.
If by chance anyone is reading this that has been affected by a school shooting, please know that I'm filled with sadness and anger over what happened yesterday. Kids in Parkland are not alive today because of a "blessing" or "luck." They are alive because they were not in the wrong place at the wrong time. The power to take a life, many lives in fact, is too easy to acquire in my country. Four shootings in middle and high schools in just 45 days so far this year. What's in store for the next week-and-a-half?
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