My kids know too much about gun violence. I work for CNN and the news is on all the time in our house. For the past few weeks I have been working non-stop and they have heard me talking to families who lost loved ones in the recent mass shootings and lawmakers who are pushing in vain for something to change. They have heard me talking to Miah Cerillo’s dad about how tired and frustrated he is, Jennifer Gaitan who pleaded with police to do something as she stood outside of her daughter’s school while an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children inside, and Aaron Salter III whose father was gunned down trying to prevent a gunman from entering a grocery store in Buffalo, NY. My job is to learn about these victims and their families. So many of the kids in Uvalde were exactly my son’s age – 10. One shared a first name with my daughter – Alexandria. Today when I heard Alexandria’s mother describe her last day – going to an awards ceremony and promising a trip for ice cream after school – I couldn’t help but think of my kids’ last days of school filled with things like market day and continuation and a trip for ice cream with their dad while mom was home calling the families of dead children.
My kids assure me that they are fine because their school has active shooter drills. They have bullet proof doors. There’s a red bag they scan when a shooter enters the building. They have protocols. They had a lockdown and school canceled when a girl traveled to Colorado to potentially recreate an attack at nearby Columbine High School. They have heard about mass shootings at two schools (Arapahoe High School and the STEM school) in our area in the past few years. They have seen what happened in other schools but they have trained and know what to do if it happens in theirs. But then last night my son woke up with a nightmare about a mass shooting. So they are not really fine. But this is their reality.
This has been my childrens’ reality their entire lives. Along with tornado drills they have had active shooter drills. Every time there has been a mass shooting they have seen their mom lock the doors to her office and work around the clock. They have never been shielded from the photos or the videos or the news. What is different today is that this is now this is the reality for EVERY child in America. Every parent has to talk to their kids about it. Because nowhere in America is safe. Everyone is ready to jump under a desk at school or inside of a freezer at the grocery store or behind a car in a parking lot if they hear gun shots. This is no longer something that my family is uniquely attuned to. It is everywhere.
We are living in a time when an 11-year-old girl has to testify in front of Congress about smearing blood on herself and playing dead to stay alive. We are living in a time when children have to be identified by the heart on their converse shoes because their bodies have been so mangled by bullet holes. We are living in a time when a good guy with a gun in Buffalo can’t stop a shooter because the gunman is wearing so much body armor. This is not okay.
There have been over 200 mass shootings already this year. Each one of these shootings not only impacts the lives of those whose loved ones are killed. It impacts the other kids in the Uvalde school, the other shoppers at the Buffalo grocery store, the other patients at the Tulsa medical clinic. It impacts their friends and families as well. It impacts the entire community. It impacts people who hear about it on TV. The amount of people traumatized by this horrific violence is immeasurable. This is a collective nightmare and it is not the America that I want to live in.