“We heard the shots fired, and, um, we kind of like got under the pews,” the 10-year-old boy told the reporter outside of his school, which had just been shot up by a deranged individual with an arsenal of weapons and endless amounts of ammunition.
“They shot through the stained glass windows, I think. It was really scary,” the boy continued. “We waited like 10 to 5 minutes – I don’t really know – and then, um, we went to the gym and the doors locked just to make sure he didn’t come. We waited in the gym for more news. Most people were OK. My friend got hit in the back and went to the hospital.”
This is a day in the life of an American school child.
So normal, so expected now that our elementary school-aged children are holding press conferences to describe the shootings. Kids in high school could likely diagram the scenes, give lectures on the weapons used and plot out safety plans for large buildings.
Two tiny humans were killed in the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School on Wednesday. Two tiny, happy, smiling lives ended by yet another damaged and psychotic person who we gave access to the most deadly weapons known to man, and required absolutely nothing more than a name and criminal history (maybe) to obtain them.
That’s nuts.
You know it’s nuts. You know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the way we allow access to firearms and ammunition in this country is off-the-charts stupid. Nothing else that creates such death and destruction is sold with so little care or requirements.
We don’t let people operate forklifts without training. But we routinely hand over rifles that have the ability to fire more than 100 rounds of ammunition through stained glass windows and into the bodies of 8-year-olds without so much as a pamphlet on how to operate those guns.
It’s disgusting. It’s infuriating. And it’s nuts.
Nowhere else on the planet does such death occur. Because nowhere else on the planet worships firearms the way Americans do. As if their mere presence makes men macho and homes safe. We have bestowed upon these deadly tools a reverence that is, quite frankly, fantasy.
Despite more than 44,000 gun deaths in America in 2024, we somehow believe these weapons make us “safe.” Take such statistics, substitute the name of literally any object in place of “gun,” and then make the case that possessing that object makes us safe.
The only thing that comes close is cars. And we have attached all sorts of safety restrictions and requirements to cars, and allow for major lawsuits if automakers ever fail to produce cars that don’t meet those rigorous safety standards.
But not guns.
Because car manufacturers haven’t lobbied as effectively.
We can’t have restrictive gun laws, the right-wingers and gun nuts will tell you, because there’s a right to bear arms present in the Constitution. Doesn’t matter that they’re killing us by the truckload every day. That darned constitution says we can’t.
Except it doesn’t. And last I checked, whatever constitutional precedent we used to hold—for women’s health care, presidential accountability, Supreme Court processes, etc.—is able to be dismissed for the flimsiest of reasons, much less the death of thousands of school children.
So, really, spare me the constitutional BS. You aren’t changing it because you either don’t want to or because the gun lobby money is just too sweet. Either way, we all clearly see that supposed constitutional concerns are as phony as those thoughts and prayers y’all keep sending.
Also, it would be nice if we stopped pretending that the ownership of weapons is, in any way, tied to the belief that average citizens are going to beat back a government that’s overstepping its reach. Um, pardon, but there are armed soldiers on the streets of American cities, our government is kidnapping citizens and renditioning people, sans due process, to foreign prisons and locking up others for weeks on end on American soil. When, exactly, are you goobers gonna get started protecting America with your guns?
The bottom line is this: We’re watching children die horrible deaths and be scarred for life from dealing with absolute horror scenes because we refuse to restrict access or require training or do the bare minimum of tracking when it comes to the weapons that are killing them.
We could stop it. We know we could, because we’ve watched other countries do it. We don’t because we’ve chosen guns over kids. We’ve chosen political talking points over basic common sense and decency.
It’s stupid. It’s cruel. It’s depressing. It’s evil.
And if we had a progressive party with a backbone at all in this country, it would spend every waking hour laying the bodies of every child at the feet of those who continue to stand in the way and continue to fuel this atrocity.
Until we do that, and until we shame people enough that changes are made, I guess we’ll just continue watching elementary school students hold press conferences to describe what their dead friends looked like inside their schools.
