When is Enough #Enough?
By: Sherry Kappel
Tags: Gun Control, America, Guns, Parenting, School Shootings

When I write about these horrific crimes, sometimes I include stats and sometimes I do not. Stats typically add — or perhaps used to add? — veracity to one’s claims. So I can blather on about how firearms are the second leading cause of death for children in the US — just a hair less than motor vehicles and double that of cancer — and the primary cause for black children. I could talk about mass shootings in general vs. school shootings, domestic shootings, police shootings, suicide, and accidental vs. intentional gun deaths.

Most of the time, I don’t bother, and for several reasons. First, I took enough stats in college to know that you can make the numbers say whatever you’d like, and people who support the NRA are of course very practiced in this. Second, the numbers vary by source (with most saying that key categories are under-reported), and people will attempt to discredit them by citing another source which is fairly easily done. The sources are really good at sounding legit and hiding their political intent. But any dimwit with any connection to reality whatsoever can see that school shootings are increasing, that it is an almost uniquely American phenomenon, that some types of guns are more popular than others.

When I leave out the numbers, this really sends the people who are more concerned about numbers than children. The odds of getting killed in school are still very slim, they say. Our schools are still very safe overall, they say. It’s not a gun issue but a mental health issue, they say (yes, these same people who only trot that last argument out for white shooters, and notably don’t support mental health funding anyway). What they’re really trying to say about me? You’re not listing the numbers, You don’t know what you’re talking about.

I can’t even tell you how often one of my kids has had a reason to say, Hope I don’t get shot today. How many times my five exchange kids over the years have said, Don’t think I’ll mention this to my parents back home. How often my own heart has fallen to the floor.

I don’t suppose that these people really don’t care about children at all, they just care more about their guns. Or they’re thoroughly brainwashed. Or most likely they understand that talking about real, live (or dead) kids will never win them any points. Normal readers, normal people may have some sympathy with gun owners, they may appreciate numbers, but they do not want to see America’s children called collateral damage. Normal readers, normal people care about kids. Normal people cry when they see Riley’s picture. Bailey Holt’s picture. Martin Duque Anguiano… Alaina Petty… Alex Schachter…or the latest, Kendrick Castillo, who also tackled his shooter.

So let’s talk about the kids — who are the main reason I choose to skip over the stats. Yes, it’s a very small number of kids who actually die in school shootings (or are even shot). One could call them collateral damage, if one wishes to be pragmatic about our children and our future. We can ignore that they were smart kids, brave kids, possibly the kids who would have cured cancer or solved global warming, the center of their parents’ universe and their reason for breathing. We can ignore that there is no good reason for them to be dead at all.

We can ignore those families and friends, who are five or ten or fifty times as many in number as the kids who were killed. Almost anyone who has lost a child — in a violent manner or otherwise — will tell you that it’s hard to wake up without thinking about them every morning for the rest of their lives. Every family occasion will remind them, every one of life’s celebrations that happen to some other kid. When someone doesn’t mention their dead kid or friend — they notice. The days, the years, the dollars and lack of sleep, the love and memories they carried into raising those children up.

Still a relatively small number, I suppose, if you’re still counting. Expanding the circle outward, though, are all of the other kids and teachers who were there or absent that day. Those survivors who know firsthand now, just how expendable they all are. Those who will jump at every loud noise for the next few years, or maybe forever. Those who will suffer survivors’ guilt, or possibly even kill themselves as some of the Parkland kids recently did. The teachers who wonder if they could have or should have done more. The parents of the survivors who still got the texts saying He’s in my classroom, and wandered around in a fog wondering for hours whether they are still parents at all. And all of the law officers and medics who carried out the bloody bodies, the images indelibly etched into their memories. Who then go home to their own kids.

But it hardly stops there. Remember that in-school training I mentioned, or those “lesser” incidents? Every school in America, every one of our children. I can’t even tell you how often one of my kids has had a reason to say, Hope I don’t get shot today. How many times my five exchange kids over the years have said, Don’t think I’ll mention this to my parents back home. How often my own heart has fallen to the floor. I can’t imagine there is a single, loving parent in the country who hasn’t felt this numerous times — even those in favor of less restrictive gun laws. In a state with more guns than people, half of our high school stays home following a threat.

Last but not least are the millions of teachers in the US, caught both literally and figuratively in the crosshairs of guns and politicians. My husband, for example, a teacher who has seen numerous guns and knives across his tenure, and the rise in school security that never seems to be sufficient. Now many lobbyists and politicians would have us believe that these teachers, who are by their very nature and choice of profession nurturers — who spend eight hours of every day and every year trying to mold our children into the best possible human beings they can be — should also carry guns and be able to kill these same children at a moment’s notice.

These politicians and lobbyists claim the teachers “are good with it.” That teachers, who have never done much of anything simply for the money, will happily carry guns if we pay them more, they say. It’s okay to loosen rather than tighten the concealed carry and other gun laws, they say. They have “stats,” they say. So do I. (I’ve also seen the stats on their NRA funding.)

But even more importantly, I have children. Riley’s parents had a child whose spirit lives on. And all of these children, these brave, committed kids who have been through active shooter training and are still willing to tackle a gunman, might be the only hope America has left. Let’s hope they survive it.

Or, we could finally decide that they matter and enough is #enough.