First off, my daughter is fine. She was still in class when the shooting started and they sheltered in place. They were escorted out by the police later and we got her home. My daughter is fine, but someone else’s daughter isn’t and is in the hospital. Three other kids were also hurt. We were lucky — no one died.
Shaken up? Oh yeah.
Every time one of these damned things happen it has always felt closer and closer — but that’s been in a more metaphorical sense. That one would happen within yards of my daughter’s classroom? Unthinkable.
Except that’s not right, is it? It’s thinkable. It happens all over the place in this country. It happens all the the time. It happened yesterday. It will happen again somewhere else; statistics say before the end of next week. It’s NOT unthinkable. It’s normal now.
Fuck this.
Some people shouldn’t have guns. It’s just that simple. Hell, I’m one of them. It’s been demonstrated time and time again even here that I have a temper that flashes white hot. You know what the thought was racing through my brain as I rushed to go get my little girl? “Anyone who thinks their right to own a gun is more important than my little girl DIES.”
Okay, there were other thoughts too, but that was one of them. They tend to fly by pretty damned fast in this situation. I wish I didn’t know that.
To grab a quote from “Firefly”, there is a special place in hell reserved for people who think their “2nd amendment rights” matter more than the rights of others — right beside child molesters and people who talk at the theater. Some people shouldn’t have access to guns. It’s not a matter of opinion here, not right vs. left. If you can’t put that simple concept that there are people who should not and never should be armed ahead of the 2nd amendment then you’re just WRONG and I have no use for you.
I didn’t post about this yesterday because of my temper. I knew that I would say something awful so I waited until this morning, when I would be calmer. I’m not much calmer. A man I work with and respect said that it would take time. I know that. I wish that he didn’t know that.
Think about that a moment — a man I had never met before 9 months ago KNOWS what I’m feeling, and was able to offer advice. This has become our new normal.
You know what gun people? I really am not interested in taking your guns away from you. But I would like to take the guns away from the people who shot 4 kids at my daughter’s school yesterday. I’d be happier if we’d taken their guns away on Monday. I’d like to take the guns away from every single jackass, idiot, and person with a misplaced sense of right and wrong. I would like to have been able to take the guns away from every single person who has shot up a school, a workplace, a place where people gather. Face it, so would you. If you don’t then you’re lying. Or a psychopath.
If you’d rather let one of these people own a weapon — the kinds of people who put children and others at risk — over a principal I’m not convinced you actually understand then what the actual fucking use are you? For me, a man with two children in an increasingly frightening world, I am willing to do just about anything to protect my children.
If you aren’t, then just what kind of parent are you?
So tell me gun people, how do we do it? There are people in the world who shouldn’t have guns. How do we actually do it?
I know of only one real answer. The 2nd amendment has got to change. People hide behind the fucking thing with such ferocity that people are dying at a STAGGERINGLY high rate, because people who shouldn’t have guns actually have them. They’re easy to get. They’re easier than booze and cigarettes — both of which are regulated and in the case of booze actually illegal in a few spots in the country. People fly the 2nd amendment flag with such unshakable conviction that the only way to fix this is to fix the very foundation upon which it is based.
I have no problem with anyone owning a gun who is responsible with it. Someone like a Barney Miller of the world who when he got home from his job as a police captain put his gun in a safe and his bullets in a cabinet on the other side of the room. But far too many people own guns just because the constitution says they can. Well guess what? For a long time the constitution said you could own people and that those same people count as 3/5 of a person for census purposes. For a long time the constitution said women couldn’t vote. It said we couldn’t drink. Then it changed its mind. The constitution can be UPDATED. It should be, to account for the modern world.
I’m not sure that I have that fight in me. I’m tired. Bone tired. The kind of tired you experience when the adrenaline finally runs out. We have a problem — many problems — and we seem addicted to them like a petulant teenager; clinging to them as if the world would end if we changed when we absolutely MUST change or get left in the scrap pile of our own deterioration. I’m not sure we’ve got it in us. Lots of people do, but the country as a whole doesn’t seem to. I wish I was wrong. I’d be happy to be wrong, but to just cite one example we are still fighting the exact same fights about racism we were when I was a child myself, over 4 decades ago.
My daughter is a Senior and has started applying to colleges. I’m encouraging her to apply overseas. To get the fuck out of here. The rest of the family is thinking the same thing — we’ve been talking about it for a while but yesterday’s events have sharpened the discussions. My daughter is fine but someone else’s isn’t, and the difference between the two is astonishingly small.
I wish I didn’t know that.