At 10:12 am on 27 August, a friend asked me how close I live Fusion Catholic SchoolI told him that I did not know. He said that there was a school shooting and it was right from my house. I was in shock. I did not experience anything like this earlier.
But then I asked myself, should we really be surprised?
I started digging. And when I came to know that there is More than 390 schools shooting since 1999That number blew me. This made me sad. This hated me.
And it hit close to a house. I saw a picture of a friend of a friend’s son, who grazed with a bullet behind his neck. A few inches elevated or lower, left or right, and he can die.
After flying through my social circle, a close friend of mine replied in our group chat that his close friend was the father of an eight -year -old child who was tragically killed. How thin it is between life and death, shattered a news title and a family forever.
I cannot imagine the call that the father received – the call never wants. I don’t know how you return to him. I don’t know how you walk on this scene, knowing what you are going to see.
And I cannot fathom any parents’ pain, running to the scene in terror because they wonder whether their child is safe, injured or has gone. How could they see the broken glass, where the chapel was filled with bullets, a place for the sanctuary had turned into a crime site.
The script is so estimated after each shoot that it looks porn. First of all, we mourn. Vigils, hashtags, statements. Then comes a political spectacle. Democrats shout about gun control, such as confiscation was politically possible or practically applied. Republicans are more guns, more protection, and perhaps teachers, such as we can ask over-bizhed teachers to become a trained warrior.
By night, the media blames culture in its silo, conservative channels, blaming liberals for firearms. By the weekend, we stopped talking about the dead and started talking about each other. And then silence.
Nothing happens. To the next one. And the cycle repeats.
That number – 390 shooting – is placed in my head. Three hundred ninety times children were shot in school, and we can only remember a handful. This ratio tells you how little we give to the lives of children when we talk about political sacrifice. We remember Colombin. We remember Sandy Hook. We remember Parkland, Ulde, perhaps some others. The rest have become invisible.
Hundreds of families living with trauma do not bother to remember.
Sorry, baby. This is what we are saying as a society.
Sorry, children – your pain was not great enough to live in the news cycle.
Sorry, children – Your deaths do not move the needle.
This is neglect, not numbness. When this happens, we feel sad. We refuse to hold it for a long time to demand real change.
Even those who care, who follow the news, who feel hatred, cannot keep these tragedies directly. They come very fast, often too. Name, face, number collapses in each other until the scary becomes uninterrupted. This staining is not an accident. This is what allows us to move forward, to show off that we are surprised every time to avoid the weight of changing anything.
Forgetting is the sexual system. Neglect is a policy.
We turn the tragedy into posture. Instead of solution, symbols, sacrifices of sacrifice and culture wars. Everyone gives weapons to national sorrow. Nobody actually tries to solve it.
If it seems eccentric, it is not. This is just a record that has already happened. After 9/11, for good or bad, the US tried to make minimal changes. Some of those options were destructive, expensive or morally incorrect. But no one can say that the country was still standing. The system was reorganized, laws were re -written, security was rigid. The same request has never been implemented in schools.
I feel terrible for children who live with it as their background, who drill lockdown before knowing their multiplication tables. I feel terrible for the parents who carry the silent fear of every school drop-off. And I think children will have to think about it.
But I also blame us. Not just NRA. Just “not the other side.” Our inaction, our excuses, our political tribalism, all this confuses us. Some politicians may claim that budgets do not allow for correct improvement, that schools cannot be rigid, that guards are very expensive. But money has never been an issue in this country. We always had the ability to find it.
And if the truth is told, America is never afraid of running a deficit. Fiscal responsibility becomes a smokscreen for moral irresponsible.
More and more people are asking why America’s birth rate is falling, why the average age of society is rising, why the younger generations are coming out of paternity. I read and surprise; Do you not follow the news?
Of course the birth rate is decreasing. If this is the world that we are building, where children want to increase class doors and remember the routes to escape, then why would anyone trust that to bring new life in it? Climate fear, political dysfunction, debt crisis, cost of growing, not even whispering civil war. Who can blame them?
I know we can do better. Because anything is better than nothing. But until we work, we are complex. Are we really risked children’s deaths to avoid measured gun control? Shouldn’t we strengthen school security by knowing the risk of more tragedy?
why not both? Why not a little sacrifice for children and parents?
Kori Quasanic is an entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and contributor to common ground thinking.
