February 14, 2018, Valentine’s Day.
The day 17 Hearts stopped beating.
Another bloody day in America, where an allegedly troubled,
young, white man shot up a high school
with his AR-15.
While Marjory Stoneman Douglas High was terrorized, I attended my fourth-grader’s chorus concert. 150 students and parents tucked into the Central School auditorium at the same moment 3,000 Parkland students sheltered in place or ran for their lives or shot to death. I live in a small rural community. Safe. The it-will-never-happen-here safe that we force ourselves to believe as we push our kids out the door in the morning. But with every incidence of gun violence, I feel the wave coming closer and think: When does the carnage reach us?
I read about the shooting on Twitter as my husband drove us home from the concert, our son half-asleep in the backseat. The maternal urge to preserve my child’s sense of safety forced me to stay mum. After his bedtime, with the volume low, I watched a visibly distraught Broward County Superintendent, Robert Runcie, try to offer a coherent statement to his community in their despair. What are the talking points for the unthinkable?
But, school shootings aren’t unthinkable or unimaginable or rare. School gun violence is so prolific that most major news sources skip over the reporting if the body counts aren’t high enough to spike their ratings. Do you recall January 22nd in Italy, Texas, or February 1st in Los Angeles? I don’t. And, unless it’s your district that’s victimized, you probably don’t remember either.
Public Schools are the catch-all for social service’s failings. Many students arrive needing much more than math and science. Across the country, the demand for comprehensive mental health reform is evident in our classrooms. But with a lack of qualified counselors and even less funding, our schools struggle to provide basic psychological support to our students. Yes, we must address the nationwide mental healthcare crisis. But mental health is not killing our children. Guns are killing our children.
The widespread availability of firearms is a public health pandemic. And the “thoughts & prayers” response is a passive aggressive pathetic excuse for inaction.
I listened to District Attorney, Pam Bondi, an ardent defender of the same Floridians that she failed to protect, “You will not be scammed by online fundraisers or overpriced funeral directors. Your needs will be met . . . state-funded funerals . . .” I wondered if it were easier for her to clean up the aftermath rather than pass up the NRA money funneled to her campaign.
Twenty-four hours later and I’m still glued to the news coverage and numb to the totality of the rising death toll. But aren’t all Americans? Numb, I mean. Overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of students being picked off as they sit helplessly at their desks. In 2012, after the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, where twenty fourth-graders and six teachers were gunned down by another mentally ill white guy, I like most sane Americans thought, finally! Finally, a mass shooting so heinous Congress will be forced to act. They will allocate critical funds for mental health, rescind the Dickey amendment and pass more restrictive gun laws. For five years, I’ve watched activists and advocates and moderate politicians fight to enact common sense gun policy. And while the majority of Americans support gun control, the seismic political shift—the one where we recognize gun violence as an emergency public health concern—hasn’t happened. And year after year and body after body the voters grow weary of signing petitions and holding signs and wondering when our elected officials are going to do something.
I’m at my desk the second morning after the shooting still wrestling with this essay trying to cobble together a conclusion. Processing as writers do. But I can’t process the violence because there is no common sense in violence. Then it occurs to me, it is not the violence What I’m struggling to rationalize is why our government refuses to act. And as crystal clear as the cliché-morning sun shining in across my desk, I know the answer. Governments don’t act. People act.
Faced with what seems to be an unstoppable reality, I’ve been a sitting duck. I sit here in Vermont where the population is less than Greater Boston. I am aware of the escalating fatalities. Yet, aside from a few donations and a letter to my congressman, gun violence hasn’t been on my radar because the shooting hasn’t reached my school. But the carnage is here. From West Paducah to Columbine to Virginia Tech to Chardon to Sandy Hook to Alpine High to Townville Elementary to San Bernardino to Freeman High to Aztec High to Marshall County to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, American schoolyards are under attack.
The political posturing was immediate. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s response: “This is not the time to jump to some conclusion not knowing the full facts.” While in Vermont, Governor Phil Scott stated, “We’re fortunate we’re one of the safest states in the country, and I believe our gun laws are balanced, they balance public safety with our rights.” That was until a day later when 18-year-old Jack Sawyer was arrested in Rutland for allegedly planning a mass shooting at Fair Haven Union High School. By week’s end, with the threat closer to home Governor Scott conceded that he’s now open to a discussion about gun control. Why does gun violence have to come to our doorstep for us to take action?
I will not accept that the only hope for our children’s safety involves armed intervention. When Secretary of Education Betsy Devos’s go-to solution for stopping school shootings is arming our teachers, the time has come for public shaming. I will wield my mighty pen to expose NRA-backed politicians and those companies who continue to profit off the growing death toll. We must teach nonviolence, fund mental health initiatives, and see gun violence as the public health emergency that it has become. Empower the Centers for Disease Control to study gun violence and rescind the Dickey Amendment. And, if our elected officials refuse to support sensible gun legislation—vote them out.
As a community, it’s time to take a hard look at ourselves, and ask: What would I do today if this happened at my child’s school? I am a fortunate mother; my son is alive and eating his Cheerios at the kitchen table. But I am no longer a sitting duck and I will not wait for the day after to act.
Find this message out in the world:
https://vtdigger.org/2018/02/20/kelly-hedglin-bowen-are-we-powerless/
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