Guns…Again.
October 2, 2018
Yesterday, my 7-year old became part of the “active shooter” generation. At 3:45 p.m., as my husband was arriving at her school to pick her up, all of the children were suddenly whisked back inside the building, with no explanation to the waiting parents. Forty minutes later, they were released. It was a “shelter-in-place” emergency, as shots had been fired in another part of the City.
Everyone was safe; it was not a shooting inside her school.
When I asked her what happened, she explained that they had to go back in their class and sit quietly against a wall. It was hard for everyone to stay quiet, she said, and so the teacher admonished them in a loud whisper, saying that those who were talking do not care about their friends, or their friends’ parents. “What would happen,” the teacher said, “If there really was a shooter and he came into our classroom because you were talking and killed us all?” This was a terrible choice of words by this teacher, but I don’t blame her. How does one deal with such a situation? How does one talk to 7-year-olds about the threat of a massacre?
When I asked my daughter how she felt about it all, she said (in that 7-year old way, trying to act cool but scanning our faces to see if we were scared), ”It was ok; the shooter was outside the school.”
And so it begins. She now knows she can be shot and killed at school. This is the most egregious crime we adults are committing against our children, and it’s not ok. If you are outraged, too, here are a few organizations to support who are fighting for sensible gun laws: