Tired of Being a Coward

When I first saw the news from Uvalde, Texas I decided that there wasn’t anything else to say about school shootings in this space since I had written over a dozen posts after similar carnage. Instead, I reposted two of the more detailed posts on the subject and let it go at that. 

Ever since I’ve felt like a coward.

The truth is that I can’t get the images of those children out of my head. I can never unsee the pictures of those two teachers who died trying to protect them. I can never shake the panic that wells up in me the instant I hear or read the words school shooting, that moment when the unimaginable enters my head…could it be Pam’s school, Kaitlin’s, or the classrooms of the half dozen other teachers I know and love? Then I immediately think of my nieces and nephews, the children of my friends and neighbors. When I hear that its some school in west Texas, I begin to breathe again. But, what about those west Texas kids? What about their parents? Those kids will never draw another breath, and those parents will never breathe again without the heavy weight of grief grinding away at their souls.

I’ve spent the last couple of days skimming through all the stale arguments about guns. I’ve read of statistics that suggest that this or that might work, others that draw the opposite conclusion. I’ve read passionate defenses of an unfettered 2nd Amendment, equally passionate pleas for banning assault rifles. 

On my Facebook feed, that hardy perennial—the calligraphy lettering against baby blue background which reminds us that guns are not the problem, just the people who use them—has made many appearances. I read the words and part of me agrees with the sentiment. Guns are inanimate objects, neither evil or good until put to use for either evil or good purposes. I get it. But the notion that a weapon designed to kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time is irrelevant to what happened in Uvalde, Texas is patently absurd. The fact that the particular weapon involved was purchased by a boy on his 18th birthday, even though that boy had a history of making unhinged claims on social media that he had big plans to shoot up an elementary school, is certainly not irrelevant…is it?

What disturbs me the most about this conversation is the fatalism of it all, the notion that at the end of the day we are powerless to prevent these horrors. There are 300 million deadly weapons in the United States, 17 million of them AR-15’s. Any attempt at confiscation would be a fool’s errand. Actually, I have made a similar argument in this space on more than one occasion and part of me still believes it.

But, as a citizen of a nation where school shootings are as ordinary as the common cold, to remain true to the proposition that there is nothing we can do to stop the killing is to give up, admit defeat, and get back to binging the Johnny Depp trial.

No. Not this time.

I am not at all convinced that any particular action we might take as a country would be a “solution”. I am equally unconvinced that any change in law we might enact would stop all such crimes. Preventing mass shootings will be a generational effort requiring many attempts at solutions. But I’ve grown weary of the defeatist attitude that has rendered us powerless to stop the mass murder of school children. 

I see this chart and I want to punch someone in the face:

Since the beginning of The Tempest in 2011 there have been the following number of school shootings:

Canada—2

France—2

Germany—2

Japan—-0

Italy—-0

Britain—0

The United States of America—-288

I refuse to accept this horrifying statistic as something that Americans simply have to endure. If this is the price we all are forced to pay so anyone anywhere at any time can purchase an automatic rifle, then I submit to you that the price is too damn high.

So, I am open to trying to stop it. Let’s try some reasonable restrictions designed to prevent crazy people from getting their hands on weapons of mass killing intent. At least make it harder, right? I’m tired of hearing how easy it was for some lunatic to buy an AR-15, how insanely simple it was for them to arm themselves with such deadly tools. If we enact a law that doesn’t work, we’ll have to try something else. It will be a process, a crucible we all will have to endure to make our nation less dangerous for our school children. But whatever you do, don’t tell me there’s nothing we can do. That is defeatist bullshit of the highest order and frankly, un-American. We put a man on the moon for God’s sake. What we truly can no longer afford to do is…nothing.