WAYT: Don't Shoot

What are you thinking about today?  Are you thinking about current events?  I cannot stop thinking about the school shooting in Ohio. 

Not only did my high school classmates and I experience 9-11 together; before that, we experienced Columbine together.  I can’t remember why I wasn’t at school that day, but when the shooting was actually occurring, I was sitting in my Grandma’s car.  The radio was broadcasting a play-by-play from the scene.  It was terrifying.  

At that time in my life, I didn’t know anything about mental health problems in children.  The biggest issue back then was Ritalin.  Among my classmates, there were outcasts who might have been capable of that kind of senseless destruction.  I’m sure I was a bully, to one degree or another.  Now that I’m older, I feel that silence makes you complicit, so I know now that I was guilty then. 

(Can I say I’m sorry?)

My husband is earning a master’s degree so that one day he can serve as a principal.  He worked on a major project recently that studied bullying.  It was terrifying.  The scariest conclusion Frank pointed out to me is that in today’s society, children are bombarded 24-7 with Facebook and texting.  There’s nowhere to hide from your peers when they want to hurt you. 

Is that the problem today?  What do you think? 

What I really want to sound off on is guns.  Many people don’t share my point of view on guns.  I don’t think anyone but police officers on duty and military service members on a field of battle should have access to a gun.  Guns kill people. 

But today I just can’t get into that.  I feel so weighed down and scattered by the loss of these children’s lives and innocence.  What brought them to the tragic conclusion of their short lives?  Why did it have to end this way?

A school shooting can happen anywhere at any time.  God forbid, but it could one day happen at the school in your neighborhood.  God forbid, it could happen at my husband’s school.  When Auggie’s a student in a few short years, this danger will lurk in the back of my mind.  Today these fears are paralyzing me. 

What is being done to prevent violence in schools?  Are parents involved enough in their children’s lives?  Are their teachers tough enough to spot the hard things in their lives?  Are children warned about the danger of hurtful words, of neglectful indifference to the child sitting next to them in class every day?  Could they even grasp that murder is a potential consequence of even the most minor of slights?  That is hard for even me to comprehend as a grown adult! 

Maybe the problem is that we don’t speak about the consequences enough, or at all.  If a child walks into a school, aims a gun at a fellow student and pulls the trigger, thousands of things shatter in the world surrounding those two babies.  Did anyone tell those babies that life is so fragile that you break it a little just by thinking about this kind of scenario? 

This isn’t the best day for me to be blogging, since I’m not being very clear on anything.  But I hope that I’m bringing different perspectives to light for you, my readers.  Any words that I can share that help to stop this kind of thing are worth it, whether my ideas are fully fleshed out or not. 

In conclusion, follow this link: http://youtu.be/07Mx-sOJ8Po  It’s a message from some middle schoolers I know.