I’m still struggling to find anything to say today. I had a nightmare last night that everyone in my son’s nursery school was massacred, including his teachers. My son was spared only because his mother and brother picked him up 10 minutes early. This last part is actually true. They did pick him up early yesterday. I incorporated that information into my dream. Obviously, this tragedy has disturbed me greatly, on both a conscious and subconscious level.
I went to the grocery store this morning and I noticed every kid and I looked at their parents, and I knew they were thinking the same things. How would they react if it was their kids who were murdered?
I see it in my Facebook feed, with so many apolitical friends, many of whom I went to kindergarten or middle school or high school with. They are all shaking their heads. There was something more personal about this event.
All I know is that if we can obsess about the loss of one ambassador and three contractors in Benghazi, we can obsess on the loss of 20 little kids and their educators. Can’t we?
One thing that’s really struck me is how different the reaction in America has been to previous tragedies. There’s already been several shooting sprees in the US in 2012 and none of them evoked the same kind of soul-searching that’s happening right now. It might be because children were involved, it might also be because it happened in a state not particularly renowned for gun violence or gun ownership, but there seems to be more substance behind the calls for change this time.
Of course, the final nail in the coffin for handgun ownership in the UK was the Dunblane massacre, and this incident holds many similarities.
Also, I can’t get it out of my head from when I was substitute teaching before I found a permanent job. I was subbing for a kindergarten class for a week (teacher was down in North Carolina to pick up her son coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan). And one day they told us there would be an “intruder drill” and to be ready for it. They explained what to do before it happened, and told me not to tell the kids about it. It was supposed to happen at 9:00. Nothing. I had to take the kids to “specials” (it was PE that day) at 9:30, and I still heard nothing but 9:20. So eventually I had to make a decision…do I just not take them, knowing a drill will happen any minute, or take them anyway? I decided to take them anyway. While we were walking…the drill goes off. I didn’t really know what to do, but the library was right there and so I huddled them into the library into the storeroom closet.
And now I keep thinking back to that moment…how you are completely unprepared despite being prepared. What if it wasn’t a drill? Would I have been as calm and quick thinking to get them into that storage closet? Would it have been enough? After all, for 2-3 seconds when I thought where to put them, that may have not been enough time; we were in the hallway, as sitting ducks.
Sorry, just thinking out-loud.
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Many, many heartbreaking stories with a commonality of teacher heroics. All were professional, kept the kids calm and acted like it was a drill. Even in the assembly lines of all kids at the fire station, teachers kept calm, held up the class designation and a roll call for parents to take their kids home to safety. Due to the large number of kids in school (450+) many parents were unaware of the atrocity the teachers and kids went through. Many thought only the principal was targeted and there were no kids involved. As the hall emptied, the drama became clear as for two classes no kids showed up and those parents felt the anguish of unknown fate of their son or daughter. The toughest moment was when the20 names were announced that these children fell victim to the deadly attack.
The “lucky” parents only realized many hours later the horror which has taken place in their elemetary school. Bravo to the teachers and first responders. Depenedent on age and what the children have heard and/or seen, the trauma can extend over years to come. A taught knit community becoming more dependent ons haring grief with one another.
Cross-posted from my diary – Massacre at CT Elementary School Gunman Kills 20 Kids
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CNN Video
Sorry about that nightmare. I bet a lot of people with small children had similar nightmares last night.
If we do not look away this time, if we take the opportunity to strike while the iron is hot, we can make people look at these tragedies as needless events instead of inevitable ones.
We have to have an organized front, which is one of the reasons we’ve been held up in the past. There is no single answer for stopping these shootings, but if we take a hard look at what they all have in common, like angry young white males, histories of mental illness or bullying, and the ease with which we can procure assault weapons, then we at least have a starting point.
The gun lobbies could not buy a president this time. They are not invincible, and we need to start putting them in a hard spot from which they cannot escape. We have to take our fight to Congress and hold our representatives accountable on every level.
We can no longer be wishy-washy about gun issues. Other countries have established workable solutions, and we have to do it, too. We have to stop treating gun ownership like some untouchable holy ordained right, and make it something difficult to do.
The shooting has to be over. We have to stand up for our rights as safe citizens.
In Las Vegas today, a man walked in a casino hotel, shot a woman at the desk, and then shot himself. Both died. Ever wonder how many times a day this happens and no one takes notice.
No, such killings aren’t noticed because we have some notion that the mind of a killer varies with the size of the body count.
Sorry for the nightmare.
When Peanut came in last night with my sister, I didn’t realize how much I needed to see her. I just can’t wrap my mind around killing a room full of children…the kind of evil that takes. Fuck that mental health bullshyt – this mofo was evil.
As rotten a day as this has been for me, I haven’t had near the reaction you describe, and I have a 5-year old son who goes to kindergarten every day. I don’t worry about things like this at all; I’m nearly out of my mind at times about all the ways a careless 5-y.o. boy can maim or mutilate himself, and things like traffic and etc, but in this country I don’t worry about random armed sickos showing up at his school and creating tragedies. It’s not a plausible concern, and hence, I suppose, no nightmares, and no knowing glances out in public (although to be sure, the story is well-known here).
I say this simply as an observation of how different it feels to be a parent in an environment like this where I feel reasonably assured that there’s not even the barest chance of such an event happening here, while still processing the horrific news from the US today. Guns are all but illegal here, extremely difficult to obtain legally or otherwise. Nasty stuff happens here and there, but not mass killings.
I can’t imagine how I’d cope if we lived there right now.
Only cowards own guns.
(Police and active military are not cowards, but there are places where the police do not carry guns and someday, this liberal hopes, we will have only unarmed peace-keepers).
I am active military and I don’t own or plan to own any personal firearms. But, I think some people have legitimate need for them either for hunting or even out of fear for personal safety.
I agree on both of your points, to some degree. I have no issue with hunting and I understand that some people feel they need to protect themselves. However, I do not agree that most people who feel that they need to protect themselves are justified in owning a gun.
I keep coming back to this, plus remembering the property in the Sierra Nevada foothills that had what seemed like hundreds of poison oak plants, except they were all connected in ways that could not be seen from the surface. It was really just one big poison oak plant.
My sister came up to visit last night and I asked her how she felt, as a mom, since learning about this latest massacre. She’s an ER nurse in Oakland. She sees shooting victims of all ages daily. She said all of the other high-profile shootings of late were sad but that she is sort of jaded and numb to it all. But this one… It’s different. If this had happened to her kids she wouldn’t have been able to continue living. And just imagining something like this happening in her suburban neighborhood, just like that one in Connecticut, it was terrifying.
She seems to think that if the families from this come forward and organize, like the 9/11 families did, that things could change in a huge way because everyone would have their backs. But if the families directly affected don’t demand hearings and reports and serious legislation and a change in the mindset regarding guns and “Freedom” it will all just pass. And it will happen again and again and again.
Don’t stop talking about this. And don’t let anyone change the subject until the families have a chance to catch their breath and organize.
What you wrote is exactly right. Every word. I got chills as I was reading, especially the final paragraph.
The audacity of hope. Maybe things really can be different.
Got me thinking too, this is what struck my about Obama’s remarks, brief as they were. It reminds me how much attitudes toward gay marriage seemed to just magically shift after he got behind it. It’s like the sentiment was already there, but just by his adding his voice to the movement, it automatically made it OK for a lot of fence-sitters to speak out, too.
Maybe it was just a statistical coincidence, but nonetheless it gives me the idea that maybe the same thing could happen here, too. This story by Charles Blow lists a sickening polling reversal away from majority support for assault rifle bans in 1996 to a nearly complete flip in 2011. To me that suggests the power of leadership on this issue, or the potential for it, should President Obama put in a genuine effort.