I woke up the same as any other day. Rolled out of my very comfortable bed into the seasonal chill of early autumn, remembering I need to take the air conditioner out of the spare bedroom window. The Keurig pumped out my first coffee of the morning and I measured the honey I use in place of white sugar with a long-handled coffee spoon. I planted myself on my spot on the couch and turned on the news. There was a shooting at an Oregon elementary school yesterday and the authorities are holding a press conference. The sheriff’s voice cracked at one point and tears leaked down his cheeks.
Very sad.
I turned the channel to TSN to catch up on the later innings of baseball I missed when I fell asleep. Before we even got to the hockey highlights, the shooting was already out of my mind. I remembered that I need to get laundry started if I want to hang my shirts out on the line—there won’t be too many more days when it will be both sunny and warm enough, and I’ll have to hang them to dry inside. I have a stack of English papers to grade.
In other words, it was just another day.
I’d like to say I don’t mean to be so glib about it. That I’m being quite emotionless about a school shooting for a reason—and it is true, I do have my reasons. But the fact of the matter is that I really did just move on to the next part of my routine. Because the news, specifically this kind of news story, IS routine. We don’t go more than a week or two without some kind of shooting somewhere in the United States. Maybe it’s a supermarket, or a movie theater, or a church. But the core story is the same. Person arrives with gun. Person shoots at people. Some die. Some live. Sheriff gives us half the details because the case is an ‘ongoing investigation’. Local, state, and federal politicians add their two cents. Repeat.
Hopefully I can be forgiven for saying out loud that this has all been done before, that it doesn’t shock me anymore, that it barely elicits any emotions anymore, and that the attention I’m willing to give to the story has decreased to only a minute or two. I remember when Columbine happened. I wasn’t working that day. I was living in Louisiana. Colorado was less than twelve hours away by car—it would have been like the distance between Fredericton and Montreal, easily achievable in a day trip. And my wife at that time was teaching in the local school. The TV was on all day, and my eyes were glued to it, to the point I could probably still sketch the outline of the Columbine school grounds, the layout of the building inside, even tell you where most of the children were shot and by whom. I wanted nothing more than to load up my 1995 Neon with as much as we could carry and drive back to Canada. A few months later we did.
And the shootings continued. The sensational ones were of course not as frequent, but the media was hyper-focused on gun violence, and understandably it dominated talk shows and political discourse. Music, books, and movies were banned or altered. Provocative artists shouldered the blame. Evangelicals found the perfect way to reinsert God into the discussion—a school that posts the commandments would have been shielded from such senseless violence. Indeed, blame was assigned to virtually everyone, from the shooters’ parents to entertainers to police, and even to legislators. Surely, out of such a devastating act, something positive had to materialise, right?
Tell that to the town of Bend, Oregon.
But don’t worry, everyone. The collective will of the masses will indeed coordinate one massive push to heal, to wrap their arms around the victims’ families. They will offer the one thing that costs them nothing, but definitely makes them all sleep a little better at night. They will give the one thing that they can give that they know will offer some sort of dignified, compassionate response to such horror.
Thoughts and prayers.
In other words, they’ll do nothing.
Sure, those words of condolence are usually well-intentioned. It is literally the least someone can do in a situation like this. But that’s the point. It’s the least. Because saying nothing would be more honest. No one offering their thoughts or prayers is actually accomplishing anything, at least not outwardly. But Brandon, some might ask me, what else can we do? And it’s true, sometimes we can’t do much, and it’s a helpless feeling. People, by default, want to care; they want to help, they want to support. In cases like this, in the moment the guns are firing, there is really nothing anyone could do, except in the Oregon case, a parent happened to be nearby, and as you could have scripted in 21st-century America, he was carrying a gun. He entered the building and prevented what could have been a much more devastating outcome by shooting the sixteen-year-old shooter, stopping the carnage with one final act of violence.
And this is the part that bothers me the most. The violence, which shouldn’t have happened in the first place, only ended with the insertion of another gun, from a civilian rather than a police officer. Every advocate for Second Amendment absolutism now has the argument they’ve been pushing since Columbine. To protect us from gun violence, we need MORE guns. Fight gunfire with gunfire. CNN even had a guest speaker advocating for arming and training teachers in the (guaranteed) event another shooting happens. Teachers, if you thought planning, grading, specialized plans, duty, correspondence with parents, and other menial tasks weren’t keeping you busy enough, you’ll need to add time to practice at the shooting range now.
If the whole damned concept wasn’t stupid enough, let’s look at the practicality of the idea. Will the teachers keep their guns holstered or in a drawer? Will that drawer be locked, and will the keys always be on their person? Imagine the panic when they go to open the gun drawer accidentally with the filing cabinet key. Will the ammunition be stored separately? Maybe in that filing cabinet? When the madman bursts into the room, weapon drawn, and the kids are screaming, will he have the courtesy to wait for them to figure out which key is which, to load their gun, breathe, and find their composure, before the saloon gunfight can begin?
And no, I’m not being facetious. I’m dead serious (pun intended). Because fully trained professionals have answers for these situations in their line of work. Because when they answer a call, they have time to load and draw their weapon, to compose themselves, and to enter a situation with at least a minimal amount of poise. And even then, in the heat of the moment, mistakes are made, panic hits, nerves rule over reason, and people get hurt and die. Even soldiers face these kinds of situations, and because they too are human, they can make mistakes. If you think for a second that a schoolteacher, who I guarantee would learn all about marksmanship in a rushed PD session, would be able to react properly in a situation like this, you’re out of your mind. And they shouldn’t have to be prepared to confront an active shooter. They should be grading papers, planning lessons, helping students with their work. It’s bad enough that teaching has grown to include social work, nursing, and counseling in their responsibilities to expect them to be armed guards, too.
Why am I really so indifferent when school shootings happen? Honestly, it’s because I know that Americans—and I mean the totality of American society here, not specific individuals whom I know want to see change—simply don’t want to make hard decisions. Guns are as American as apple pie and reality TV. Not once in the finger-pointing does American society say ‘you know what, maybe we’re way too dependent on and hot-to-trot for our right to bear arms’. In what world of logic does the answer to preventing gun violence lead to adding more guns to the equation? And don’t even bother with the argument that the crazed attacker will just find something else—I actually think the average teacher would do better in defence with a decent-sized three-hole punch or stapler than a sidearm. In fact, one teacher in Bend threw her cellphone at the perpetrator, distracting him enough for the heroic parent to kill him.
How does America fix its gun violence problem? Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but they can’t because they won’t. Gun control is a complex issue, especially when it comes to hunting, sport target shooting, and other non-criminal uses of guns. But when a society asks the hard questions and places reasonable restrictions on dangerous products (like we do with cars, for example), they reduce the risk of atrocities like Bend, Oregon, from happening. And more importantly, they develop a healthy respect for the responsibility of owning dangerous products. They don’t hide behind a false sense of safety by defending a romanticised and divine right of ownership over actual human lives. Because the status quo in America is that that very manifest right to own guns is demonstrably more important than human life. Hell, if a five-year-old special needs child being shot to death by a sixteen-year-old former special needs student, who in turn is shot to death by a parent packing heat doesn’t say it all, nothing ever could. Frankly, if Columbine couldn’t start that conversation, nothing will.
But at least they have thoughts
and prayers. Now, my coffee is getting cold, and the laundry needs to go out on
the line.
