Anger is not an adequate word to describe what I, and millions of other parents, are feeling right now. It’s like calling a tornado windy or a tsunami wet. After yet another school shooting, after yet another group of kids killed, after yet another do nothing approach—the word angry isn’t good enough. We are beyond that.
And the response is so expected that I wonder why lawmakers even bother responding anymore at all. Immediately after the Uvalde shooting, Republicans called for arming teachers. It’s a bullshit solution and what’s worse is that they know it. They’ve seen it time after time. They’ve seen the same footage that so many of us parents of. Of resources officers running from schools or refusing to go in. Or the now sadly iconic videos of the police department arresting parents instead of stopping the shooter. No, more good guys with guns won’t stop school shootings. School librarians won’t stop school shootings. This isn’t up for debate anymore because it has been proven time and time again.
And the truly frustrating part, the part that is putting most parents over the edge, is that we know that this will happen again. We will see the good guys turn tail and run. We will see the pictures of murdered children and police chiefs stating at least their own officers didn’t get hurt while totally ignoring the birthdays that these children are going to miss.
Nothing is going to change. This is what has made us a failed nation. This is why parents are beyond angry. And our lawmakers don’t care.
They don’t care because this doesn’t affect them. They are willing to sacrifice children so that they can continue to get super PACs funded, to make sure their base continues to vote for their corruption, and to grow their power base. This is what our children are being sacrificed for, and don’t argue with me on this, because our children are being sacrificed. You might as line them up at the lip of a volcano and push them over. There is no difference.
Active shooter drills are now so commonplace in our children’s lives that they no longer even require an email home to let the parent know. It’s the same as a fire drill that goes unnoticed. This is our normal and my anger turns to disbelief when I ask why is this normal? Why does my 9-year-old son have to come to me and nonchalantly tell me that he learned how to hide under a desk? Obviously, these don’t work either. It’s telling kids to duck and cover in the case of a nuclear explosion. It makes no difference and instead the numbers keep going up.
Politicians continue to throw platitudes at us in an effort to distract us from the real problems. They downplay each and every school shooting. The fact that a quick google search reveals those platitudes outrage me as much as the school shootings. The great This is not the time or the place to make it political or It could have been worse.
This is the worst. This is the time to talk about guns. And we won’t. Our politicians will continue to use same the same lines. Nothing. Wlll. Be. Done.
Then there will be misleading statistics and blatant misinformation that is already out there with the help of the political machines that have embraced insanity as a way to maintain power. Hammers kill more people than guns is the insanity that is currently making its way out there. And they will use these statistics to help them ignore the ones that matter. There have been over 2000 school shootings since the 1970s. 300,000 students have experienced gun violence in their schools. 19 new gravestones have now been added to the list. These will be ignored. They always are. But hammers? Hammers are where we are at.
Normally, this is the part of the article where I give a solution. I bring experts in to give evidence-backed advice. But I’m not going to because it’s been done to death, pun intended. We all know the solution. We need tougher gun laws, to outlaw military style weapons sales, and to increase mental health treatment. There’s a bigger list that you can find yourself, but you won’t find any of these solutions actually being implemented.
Mental health treatment for youth and families remains out of reach. Assault rifles remain vaguely defined so that they can’t be outlawed, and large-capacity magazines can easily be found anywhere. You can order them online, and so can the teenage child that has had a mental break and has remained locked in his room for a year.
This is going to happen again, and our only response at this point is to expect it. This is why anger no longer describes what we are all feeling.
Good guys with guns don’t stop bad guys with guns, they reveal cowards. Locked doors don’t stop school shootings. Active shooter drills don’t make a difference, it’s only there so we don’t vote out the politicians that suck at the NRA teat. It’s the platitude we tell parents so they will keep those sweet campaign contributions coming in.
We need more than words. We need actions. And sadly, this won’t happen, and I’ll end up writing the same article once the summer is over. I want to say that we are better than this. That as a nation we can actually come together and protect those that are most vulnerable. But the problem is, it’s our politicians that consider their positions the most vulnerable and they’ll continue to ignore our children to protect themselves.
No, I am not angry. I am beyond that. There is no longer a term that describes what parents are feeling. And it won’t change. It never does.
—
This Post is republished on Medium.
—
Photo credit: Flickr