In my day, we didn't have school shooting drills

This is the absolute last thing I wanted to write about this week. But honestly, everything else seems trivial, so here we go, I’ll keep it short.

Me on my first day of fifth grade. Back when there were only 62 shootings total that entire DECADE. (Still too many, by the way.) At the rate we’re going, we’ll blow by that before the end of May.

As everyone knows, in Nashville, on Monday, March 27th (incidentally my sister’s birthday) at around 10am, six people were killed by a school shooter, including three nine year olds and three adults in their sixties.

I was going to put some stats here about how many school shootings there have been this year in the U.S. and how many there have been total, but you know what? There’s too much data to sift through. Do I mean mass shootings or just shootings where anyone has died? Does someone have to have died or could there merely have been ‘gun violence’? Here’s a link on the Sandy Hook page with facts should you care to peruse them.

You know, I’ve always found it fascinating how restrictive our society is with anything sexual, but depictions of violence are totally fine. We must protect innocent children from even the depiction of people physically expressing love, but watching graphic depictions of on-screen massacres is completely acceptable. Why is that? 

I’m living in a country where an abortion is illegal but an assault weapon remains protected. It’s becoming increasingly clear that protecting the lives of vulnerable children is not the true motive. 

I get incredibly emotional and upset after these shootings and I sometimes feel guilty for having this response. I don’t have children. I work safely from my home. (Although I do live across the street from a middle school, so maybe it’s not that safe.) But the fact that this continues to happen, children and their caretakers continue to die, and nothing changes, just fills me with despair.

How many votes can we cast? How many petitions can we sign? How much money can we throw at gun control organizations? Kids flooded the Capitol in Tennessee this morning. Some of them held signs that read, “I’m nine.” Haven’t heard anything from the politicians aside from empty platitudes. What else are these children supposed to do? 

And why is the onus on the kids to protect themselves from assault rifles?

Me, same year, on a school trip with some of my teachers in the background. None of us were concerned about being shot.

A friend of mine has two kids in different schools in Nashville. She received multiple emails on Tuesday stating how her children were safe because they’ve been trained not to open doors to strangers and how they have intruder drills and this is the world we live in. This is not a tornado. This is not basic street smarts, i.e. Don’t go anywhere with a stranger. This is preventable. (Also, the shooter blasted open locked doors with an AR-15, so.)

No one needs an assault weapon to go deer hunting.

Sorry, apparently this is not going to be short. If I hear someone say one more time to arm the teachers… (She let the sentence dangle because threatening violence is not a good look.) Any responsible person trained with any weapon, gun, knife, sword, etc. will tell you that unless you’re going to train with said weapon extensively, you’re better off without it. Why? Because you have just as good a chance getting it taken away and used against you than you do using it to defend yourself. And that’s just glossing over the fact that we’re suggesting throwing multiple firearms into schools with children on a daily and constant basis. Just stop. What are we doing?

Now, let’s talk about those teachers for a second. 

I’ll let you Google the median salary for a teacher these days. Tell me how they should be expected to go into armed combat when we’re constantly refusing to raise their pay? And yes, I’m going to say ‘expected’ because if you hand someone a gun when they go on the job, you’re basically saying there’s a good chance they’re going to have to use it. 

I have a few teacher friends in Nashville. I checked in on them this week. One of them said she’s actively looking for another job. Something not in education where she doesn’t have to worry about perhaps being killed or watching kids be killed on the job. Can you blame her?

We’ve already got a teacher shortage in this country. I applaud and admire anyone who does continue to teach because this is obviously a calling for them. As rewarding as I’m sure it is, they’re not only risking heartbreak and (arguable) poverty, they’re risking their lives. I love my job, but if there were as many work from home shootings as there are school shootings, I’d make adjustments.

I’d make adjustments.

Me, age nine, blissfully inexperienced in the ways of active shooter drills.

This is a choice. This is a national choice to continue to allow assault weapons to be sold to the public. You cannot blame this on mental illness. Millions of people struggle with mental illness daily and more often than not, they turn the harm on themselves. They don’t run out and shoot people. You cannot predict who will.

So the answer is clear. Remove access to guns. 

I made myself watch that bodycam footage. I don’t normally watch those things. I can’t do it. But I figured, if I was going to write about this, I needed to hear what those kids potentially heard when they were hiding in their lockdown areas trying to be quiet. 

It was terrifying. They blurred out the bodies, but just hearing the building alarms and the police yelling out. It was terrifying. My husband bought me this fancy watch for running for my birthday. My heart rate spiked 10 bps but my stress levels went from 25 to 73 while I watched that video. I believe it was under a minute long. Just me, sitting in my comfy office. I can’t imagine being nine and sitting through that while huddled in a closet. And this is a choice. Don’t say anything to me about how laws are created to protect the children. The children are an excuse. This is about control and money. And it’s pathetic. 

I’m always trying to be a better person. To learn and grow. And I’d like my country to do the same. I love you, U.S. I don’t want to leave you. I want you to grow and heal and be better.