Apalachee High School: The Questions That Haunt Me at Night

https://baptistnews.com/article/apalachee-high-school-the-questions-that-haunt-me-at-night/

I begin with a confession. When I first hear of a school shooting, my initial instinct is to try not to process it very deeply. I try not to think about it. I try not to watch the news coverage or read the latest news stories.

I am not at all proud of this, but I can see that it is what I often do. The reason is that it hurts too damn much. I don’t wantto dive deeply into this new horror, this new murder of children and teachers, this new shattering of families and communities, this senseless evil on top of other senseless evils.

I say this as someone who spent three full years writing a dissertation about the Holocaust. While my children were very little, I was working all day at my paid job and then reading and writing at night about the often imaginatively sadistic Nazi murder of 1.5 million children — and those who tried and mainly failed to save those children. In today’s terms, I realize I have murder-of-children PTSD.

I hate that tremble of fear. I hate that I live in a country where that tremble of fear is perfectly rational — for grandparents and parents, for teachers and school staff and, most of all, for the children themselves. Our beloved children — who must go to school in fear, who must do shooter drills the way their grandparents did nuclear bomb drills, who every so often find themselves watching their classmates and teachers being shot to death during third period.

How does a 14-year-old get access to a weapon of war and manage to leave home with it to go to school? From the home side, how is that even possible? Were loaded assault weapons just lying around unsecured? Was no one paying attention to what this child took to school?

To those candidates running for office this year, I say this: People will truly begin to believe in our democracy and have hope in our future when our politicians actually begin to solve the greatest problems that afflict us. One of these is gun violence, especially when it takes the lives of our children.

Solve this. Solve this. Solve this. Now.