Tonight in the car I was listening to NPR. More coverage of the San Bernardino shooting. And then I heard my daughter's voice in the backseat: "Wait, which shooting are they talking about now?"
Let that just sink in for a moment. Which. Shooting. Are. They. Talking. About. Now.
Those words, from my nine-year-old. My nine-year-old. My fourth grader. My fourth grader who has to practice lockdown drills. My children live in a world where they understand what an "active shooter" situation is. They are growing up in a world in which they actually have to think about being gunned down in a school, a place of worship, a clinic, a mall, a movie theater, a community center. And that is just totally fucking unacceptable to me. The fetishization of guns in America is unacceptable to me. I'm tired of feeling sick and angry and terrified and powerless. My daughter was six years old when the Sandy Hook massacre occurred and my son will turn six on the third anniversary and it is deeply fucking personal to me. I'm tired of writing the same thing: that if we just continue to say, meh, what're you gonna do after every shooting (more shootings than sunrises this year) it's not. going. to. stop. That my children will continue to exist in a world of lockdown drills that I pray, desperately, remain only drills.
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