Gun Lust in America

I've had extensive exposure to gun violence. I grew up in California, and I knew the sound of a gunshot before I knew my ABCs. I was raised in San Bernardino. I bet that name sounds familiar to you. Fortunately, I wasn't there during the mass fatalities caused by an errant gun nut who decided to kill an office full of people.

My first experience with gun violence happened when I was nine in my sub-urban neighborhood; we played with toy guns. Nerf guns. Bright orange and white. We weren't even using the soft foam bullets because they were too hard to find. We were playing a game of team hide and seek. The guns were just an added entertainment. I'm white. Ridiculously white. I glow in the sun white. I was a minority in my neighborhood. But I was nine, so I didn't understand that.

My friend, I'll call him D, was a Black kid. We played together all the time. We had been running through the open courtyard of an apartment complex laughing when we both laid eyes on the police car. I knew all the local officers, I spent a lot of my youth amid problems in the neighborhood, so I spent a lot of time talking to the police.

Today went different, though. Because the car slowed. And the officer, whom I knew, exited his vehicle differently. I couldn't have explained it then. But I know it now. His eyes moved from me to D, then to our hands, and D dropped the nerf gun. And the officer's hand moved to his waist.

"What's happening here?" he asked, his eyes lingering on D.

"We are playing a game," I said back.

My response seemed to do something because he looked at me, and I saw another shift. Then, finally, he nodded and got back in his car. And while I wasn't entirely sure what happened that day, I know we never played outside with any weapons again.

When I was 13, a man in the apartment building across the street, in a fit of anger, pulled a shotgun out and pointed it at the porch I was sitting on with friends. I remember thinking, 'I wonder if I'll hear it first?'

My third experience with gun violence involved an active shooter who had taken a family hostage in a small apartment across from the high school I attended. I had dropped out, so I wasn't in school, but I had friends in school, and I was walking that way to meet them after school when the police stopped me because they had blocked off all the roads the shooter could see.

There was a 2-hour standoff before they got the shooter out of the apartment.

I've been numbed to the dangers of guns against *me*.

But in 2017, when I went to pick up my oldest four kids and was alerted the school was on a soft lockdown because they heard gunshots nearby and were waiting for police to clear the area. My awareness of the dangers of guns was reawakened.

We live in a small rural town with less than 900 people. This shit wasn't supposed to happen here.

It turned out to be a person practicing in their yard next to the school for hunting season.

Now it's 2021, and my two youngest children, who are 7 and 8 and currently in the 2nd and 3rd grade, came home on a Friday after experiencing their first active shooter drill. Their school administration went through the school and practiced lockdown procedures in the individual rooms.

My 7yo was taught how to lie quietly under a desk while shades were drawn and lights dimmed, and desks barricaded doors. She was shown to huddle quietly because it's not a time for jokes.

My 8yo was taught the same thing, or he could pile into the classroom closets with the teacher and other students.

My 12yo was shown how to block windows. Then, the class worked on who would move what furniture; and how to make the room most secure, and all three huddled in the dark until the drill was over.

My 7yo, when the event was over and *everything was business as usual* asked her teacher, "What do we do if we're in the bathroom?"

First, no child should prepare for someone shooting up their school.

Second, no child should have to wonder what to do if they're alone and this happens.

Third, the recent shooting in Michigan that left 16-year-old Tate Myre dead after attempting to disarm the shooter makes me terrified for my 13-year-old because he is 100% the kid who would try to stop a school shooting.

Forth and most importantly. The younger three have come from a history of trauma that you can't begin to fathom. So hiding quietly in the dark is easy. Shrinking themselves to be invisible is second nature.

Do you have any idea what the fallout for drills like this is regarding children with trauma history and extensive PTSD?

That was hard enough for them, and their weekend was rough because their bodies remember the trauma their brains don't.

That was difficult enough, but a hollowed voice loomed over the speaker system the following Monday. A single word was said. LOCKDOWN.

What was practiced slowly and with care the previous week that caused its concerns was now being done with no warning. My kids followed their orders militantly. Because their trauma behavior kicked into survival mode. And my seven-year-old piled into the closet, and her legs were cramped and intertwined, and someone was on her, and she never moved.

She told my wife later that her legs were so "uncomforble" because she can't even say that word yet. But she knows that she was. And she knows she was scared.

My 12-year-old said the worst part was hearing lockdown over the speakers.

I'm sick right now. And angry that the American gun lust is more significant than and holds more excellent value than the lives of children.

Since the Columbine shooting, there has been something like 304 school shootings.

And this is an American problem. Other countries have guns in civilian hands and don't experience this.

Similarly to how we won't wear masks to protect our neighbors.

What is it about America that makes us so anti-community?

Where is our compassion and empathy for our fellow humans?

How many will it take? When will we put the lives of people before the right to own guns?

I am not anti-gun. I am pro-gun reform.

Please follow me, like it, and share if you liked what I wrote. Also, if you care to send a tip, I would appreciate that immensely!