"You'll Live Through It"

 

      A few days ago My cousin Liz posted something on Facebook. Her son, Van was complaining about having to go to school. According to her this is something he does often. They talked about it and she ended the conversation by saying, "You'll live through it. We all do." His response was, "School shootings say otherwise."

   There was nothing she could say to this except to express how much she hates that this is part of her son's reality. She's right. I hate it as well. 

   School shootings are not new. I looked at Wikipedia to see how many school shooting there were before 1999. The earliest on the list was in 1840 when a law professor was shot by a student. From that date until the end of the 1800 there were 32 incidents. From 1900 to 1999 there were 298. Most of them had less than 10 victims each until Columbine where 15 people were were killed and 24 were injured. I was surprised there were so many shootings some of them just a month or so apart in the latter decades of the 1900s.  There have been a total of 459 school shootings starting in 2000 according to Wikipedia. Again I was surprised to see how many there were. Most of them have less than 10 victims per shooting. According to Wikipedia there have been 21 school shooting so far in 2023. Forty people have been killed or wounded this year in school shootings.

   It's disheartening enough when you know about the shootings that are reported in the news. Its gets worse when you look at the statistics I've seen. The fact that many, maybe most of the shootings had no deaths doesn't make things any easier. Too many people are being hurt and I'm only looking at school shootings.

   I feel bad for Liz and for all parents who send their children to school wondering if their kids will come home safe at the end of the school day. I feel bad for kids who go to school worried about their safety. 

   Not only do parents have to worry about  their children, they also have to worry about themselves. It seems like anywhere there are large groups of people, someone gets shot. On the inside door of my pharmacy are instructions for what to do if there is a shooter in the store along with a map of the place where all employees are to gather if something should happen. It's the last thing I see before I leave.

   I have no answers for this......  At the end of her post Liz wrote, "Why is this okay? Why is this an acceptable status quo?"  I don't know. All I know is that it shouldn't be.......