What's The Story?

Who is shooting whom today?
Late last week we had yet another entry in the juniors competition with a twelve year old girl shooting two of her fellow students, injuring one of them critically. The shooter was taken into custody after the fifteen year old boy and girl were shot inside a classroom at Sal Castro Middle School in Los Angeles. Three other students where injured by flying debris.
Just another day.
Just another day of burgeoning post traumatic stress for a sea of adolescents. Starting with those injured and wounded. These kids will never feel safe in school again. Why should they? Any other students who witnessed this assault will be seeing that scene in their mind's eye for the rest of their lives. Hundreds of students, upon hearing the shots fired, ran from the school, fearing the worst. They live in a world where when people talk about school shootings, they are talking about their school. The same goes for the teachers and administrators at Sal Castro Middle School. They can scratch "that kind of thing doesn't happen around here" off their crest.
As the day unfolded, stories about how the shooting was "unintentional." Someone brought a gun to school. This kind of thing happens, apparently. In this case, obviously. Exactly why this twelve year old girl decided to bring a semiautomatic handgun to school is the question that will be asked over the next few weeks, with the truth hanging somewhere just out of reach. The story began to change the instant that the gun went off. How many other guns are in backpacks in schools across Los Angeles? The state of California? The United States? Land of the brave, home of the ones hiding underneath their desks.
The students at San Carlos Middle School will be back in class this week. So will all those other middle schoolers. And high schoolers. And elementary schoolers. And all of their parents. And all of their teachers. With the constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms. In school.