I love my kids more than my guns.
School shootings have to end.
It started with Columbine.
Twenty-three years ago I sat in 8th grade Social Studies as my best friend brought in a copy of “The Stars and Stripes” military newspaper for our current events talk that day. Her grandparents lived near Columbine, Colorado, and she was familiar with Columbine High School. We were in Europe, at our military American High School in Hohenfels, Germany. We were thousands of miles away from Colorado but we were still terrified. Later, there were articles blaming the parents of the two boys who committed the massacre. Then there were articles blaming violent video games. Then came articles wondering “why no one saw the warning signs in time.” But what was there to be seen? This hadn’t happened before. It was before the internet was everywhere for all ages, before social media connected the world, and computers were held in our hands. It was before hundreds, yes hundreds, of other shootings in schools occurred.
Guns don’t belong in elementary schools. No teacher should have to make the “choice” to shoot a student. They’re there to teach young children. To help shepherd children into a love of learning- how to read, write, add and subtract. Many children start to learn how to live with others in a mini-society of their classrooms, away from the home family unit.
Guns don’t belong in elementary schools.
Guns don’t belong in middle schools. Hormones are abundant in preteen and early teenage bodies. Support, trust, and empathy are what middle schoolers need, not a teacher trained in how to protect them. Teachers want to help their students learn to make safe choices as outlets for their emotions while also teaching them how the outside world was made.
Guns don’t belong in middle schools.
Guns don’t belong in High schools. Students are finishing their childhood, getting ready to take their first steps away from family and start their adult lives. Teachers are helping them find their path in the world and supporting their ambitions. Teachers should not be wondering if one of their students will be the next news headline for violence or if their classes will become the next statistic.
Guns don’t belong in high schools.
When my daughter entered Kindergarten in September 2020, she learned about “robber drills.”
As my daughter explained this scenario to me I wondered “what would you steal from a Kindergartner?” I quickly realized the robbers aren’t there for items. They are there to steal lives. Run and hide. Turn off the lights, lock the door, and don’t make a sound.
Why is the accessibility to guns more important than the lives of our kids?
I own guns. I used to shoot at cans and paper targets nailed to trees for fun in the country acres around my in-laws’ farm. As a wedding present my husband I were given “the newest gun” my husband had ever owned- a pump action .22 rifle. I was so excited to try it out, with bullets half the width of my thumbnail. Even if it was a present to both of us, it was mine.
I still have that rifle and my husband’s hunting rifle, used for his many years of hunting deer the week of Thanksgiving. They are in my bedroom, unloaded and set high on the wall, on the wooden rack I bought my husband for his 25th birthday. The guns lay in need of dusting on wooden hooks along with his fishing pole. Fitted behind the equipment is a painting of a bobcat, with communal words of support from my husband’s cancer battle. He died three years ago.
I worry about my kids getting cancer, like their father. I worry about my kids getting sick, from Covid-19 and monkey pox and tuberculosis and other diseases I don’t know about yet.
Why do I still have to worry about sending my kids to school? Why do we still have to worry about a boy, a newly minted “man” in age, using an assault rifle to hurt someone? What possesses someone to hurt people who have no defense against their intent?
I should be able buying groceries for my family or send my kids to school in safety and without wondering if I’ll see them in the afternoon.
Every time I hear about a school shooting, or a shooting done by a teenager, my mind rages to “WHY?!” How did we fail this child to make them think shooting others was the answer? Who told them that was the way to prove they are worthy? Who listened to them when they felt they didn’t belong, and encouraged or promoted these awful ideas?
Why are these weapons still accessible? If you want to use an assault rifle, join the Marines. If you want to feel heard, start a blog.
Emotions are normal, all emotions are valid. When my heart broke and I was mad at the world for failing to cure my husband’s cancer I turned to words. I put my voice into my blog, explaining my hurt, my rage, my grief. I never once reached for a gun. Never once.
Arming teachers is not the answer. Armed guards are not the answer. I attended 11 schools in my military childhood, and only 1 had an armed guard at the door. After the US embassy bombing in the late 1990s a single MP was put outside the main entrance to our widespread military school. He was nice- he wouldn’t talk to us as we walked by, but would wave back as we walked to our buses. He wasn’t there to check students- he was there to protect us.
Schools should stay a safe space, a sanctuary for learning. “Robber drills” are not something teachers should have to teach Kindergartners.
Make it stop.
Protect our children, all our children, from the threat assault rifles have become.
Make it stop.
Teach all levels guns don’t make you a man– age and maturity do.
Make it stop.
Protect my daughters, they have suffered enough.
We have all suffered enough.
