Don't Wait

Five years ago Adam Lanza murdered twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary school. That time has been spent debating, discussing and at times diminishing the causes of such a tragedy. There are a lot of numbers out there, but most of them put reported acts of gun violence at schools in the United States at two hundred. Give or take. On second thought, strike that "give." Leave it as "take." As a nation, we are currently experiencing a daily mass shooting. Today, somewhere, four Americans will die as a result of gun violence. On second thought, let's strike that "gun violence" politeness and cut to the chase: Four Americans will be killed. Shot. Murdered. Their lives will be lost and the ripple effect among the friends and family of the victim will move outward long past the next report of a shooting that takes more lives. 
And so it goes. Sandy Hook Promise, a national non-profit organization founded and led by several family members whose loved ones were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, has released a public service announcement called "Tomorrow's News." If you don't have a minute and a half to watch the video, the idea is that this kind of horror is preventable. The spot takes the form of a news report for the future, predicting the now terribly predictable refrain: “When the shooting starts happening tomorrow I’ll probably just think it’s firecrackers or a car backfiring or something,” a parent says. “He told some of us that his dad kept a gun in his closet,” a classmate of the shooter says. “And he always talked about using it on, you know, the people that bullied him. Tomorrow I’ll probably say that I wish I told someone.”
While we wait for Congress to pass a series of tax cuts that we don't need and build a wall that we don't need and search their calendars for a time that would be just right to talk about common sense regulations for guns in our country's possession, we can keep our eyes open. Nobody has to die trying to get an education. No one should have to stand guard over six-year-olds, protecting them from that lone gunman that "no one" ever thought would go off like they did. Shooting back  should be the stuff of action movies, not elementary school. Or middle school. Or high school. Or college. There are those who like to scoff at the notion of a gun-free zone. I work at an elementary school. Many of the kids I teach have had first hand experience with guns and their power to take lives. They are genuinely pleased to have a place to go where gunfire is not part of the day. The suggestion that we should surrender that ideal because "nothing can be done" is unacceptable. To me, and the kids I teach. Don't wait for tomorrow. It's happening right now.