Another

Do you know what phrase I will never be comfortable with? "School shootings."
There has not been a single time when I have heard or read those words without feeling a pain in the pit of my stomach. My next move is almost always to click or wait to hear a number. The number of fatalities. There is no "good number," but there are worse. The number of injured is usually limited to those who were wounded or physically injured. There is no mention of the total devastation heaped upon a community after such an event. How many lives will be damaged, ruined, forever changed by the act of a "lone gunman?"
But are they really acting alone? The young man who opened fire at Freeman High School was, according to reports, obsessed with other school shootings. Oops. There goes that pain again. It's not the pain that residents in Rockford, Washington will be feeling for the next few weeks, months, years. It's that pain that comes from the seemingly relentless string of young men and women who come to school with the expressed intent of doing harm. It's the pain of all those souls trying to imagine how this phrase will now have to applied to their community in perpetuity. Aurora. Sandy Hook. Springfield. Blacksburg. And the list seems to grow by the day. The week. The month. The year.
My wife reminds me that the names of these shooters should remain unknown. Any sort of notoriety brings them the potential satisfaction of a job well done. Mission accomplished. The safest place in the world is no longer just that. Without reason. Without purpose. Another hallway becomes a crime scene.
It makes me sick. It makes me tired. It makes me wish for a solution that seems to have been left behind decades ago. When the metal detectors showed up. When the talk of arming teachers began. When we didn't have that extra word to put in front of "school shooting" that made it even worse.
"Another."
You'll forgive me.
My stomach hurts.