One More........

Three students and three adults were shot and killed in a mass shooting at a private elementary Christian School in Nashville, Tennessee on Monday, March 27, 2023.  The students shot at the Covenant School were all nine years old.  The shooter, a former student of the school, entered the school by shooting through a side door.  The shooter was armed with two assault style weapons and a handgun, and went through the second floor, firing shots, before being shot and killed by the police.

The school shooting occurred in a wealthy subdivision of Nashville, at a private Christian school.  

It's happening everywhere. 

And we've reached an staggering new landmark.  Firearms are now the number one cause of death of American children and teens, surpassing motor vehicle accidents and cancer.

I hate that I'm numb to these.  That every time I hear about one, I just think, oh, look another one.  And that I'm getting hopeless that we will ever actually address it.  Once Sandy Hook and Uvalde happened and we did nothing, once we saw it at an elementary school and did nothing, we've just accepted it as a cost of life in the United States.  The republican representative in Tennessee has admitted as much.  "We're not gonna fix it."  Rep. Tim Burchett admitted.  His solution was to homeschool, like he has done.  Such a callous disregard. 

They don't care about us.  They never have.

I tell you, nothing has broke me like trying to reassure my kindergartener regarding an active shooter drill and my third grader writing about the shooting of a fifth grader and coming up with her solution. 

Because the really sad thing is, we know what would actually work and refuse to do anything about it, I'm repeating an and updating article that I've had to post over and over and over again now in the five years the blog has been running.  

I'll continue to do so, until maybe we start to listen.

-------------------- 

Because there have been 89 school shootings so far this year in 2023...
Because school shootings have risen 150% since 2018....
Because there have been 75 shot and either killed or wounded at a school this year alone...
Because active shooter drills are now common place in elementary schools...
Because we're teaching kids to run at shooters and then praise them as heroes, but are forgetting to mourn that necessity...
Because we have a generation of kids who view school shootings as just the way things have always been...
Because we still haven't done anything of substance to stop them...
Because chances are, we will still do nothing about this one...

Because I'm tired...

Because we can see exactly when this exploded on the scene again - when the assault weapons ban was lifted.

It bears repeating - From a post at the beginning of this blog:

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I'm tired.  I'm tired of this topic continuing to come up.  I'm tired of us continuing to have the same response - thoughts and prayers, then talking at each other, then a whole lot of nothing, and it's forgotten until we move on to the next one.

When I started this blog, my second post was a repost of a Facebook message on the Second Amendment in response to the Parkland, Florida school shooting.  There have only been 54 days in between these posts.  And here we are again, with a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas.  And I haven't even touched on all of the school shootings that have occurred.  There have been 5 other school shootings in the interim, just not to the same scope.

We have an addiction to guns in this country that causes us to look at anything else except gun control as a possible solution.  It's far past time we put everything on the table.  We should be looking at mental health care.  We should be looking at bullying.  We should be looking at the family structure.  We should be looking at socio-economic status and mobility.  AND we should be looking at sensible gun control.  We're a big country and pretty good at multi-tasking.  We're more than capable of looking at it all.

But I'm too tired to write anymore on this.  Who knows what good it does at this point.  In lieu of further debate, I'm just going to post facts and let them speak for themselves.

• On an average day, 96 Americans are killed with guns.
• On average, there are nearly 13,000 gun homicides a year in the United States.
• For every one person killed with guns, two more are injured.
• 62% of firearm deaths in the United States are suicides.
• Seven children and teens are killed with guns in the United States on an average day.
• In an average month, 50 women are shot to death by an intimate partner in the United States.
• America's gun homicide rate is more than 25 times the average of other high-income countries.
• The United States accounts for 46% of the population, but 82% of the gun deaths.
• Background checks have blocked over 3 million gun sales to prohibited people.
• Black men are 13 times more likely than white men to be shot and killed with guns.
• The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of the woman being killed by five times.

https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-by-the-numbers/

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Until it's heard...
Until we stop pretending like it will go away...
Until we do something, anything...
Until we care more about people than things...
Until we listen more to constituents than to special interest groups...

Until the next time...hopefully with a much longer gap in between

--------------------

There have been 130 mass shootings in America in the 88 days so far in 2023.

Humbling perspective.

One More......

Four students have died and several others have been injured following a school shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Michigan.   The students were shot at lunch time.  The primary suspect is 15 and there had been rumors of threats leading up to the event.

I almost forgot about this over the pandemic.  It was the one great benefit.  We did experience a great drop in school shootings, with only ten in 2020.  (And even saying only ten in 2020 is mind-blowing that I can qualify and minimize it like that.)  It almost seemed like these were becoming less of a concern.  And then, something happens to jolt us back to reality.  And to realize that the trend is back on the rise, with twenty-nine so far this year.  Twenty-one of those have occurred since August, making them part of the 2021-2022 school year.

Because we know what would actually work and refuse to do anything about it, I'm repeating an and updating article that I've had to post over and over and over again now in the three years the blog has been running.  

I'll continue to do so, until maybe we start to listen.

-------------------- 

Because there have been 29 school shootings so far this year in 2021...
Because there have been 87 school shootings since 2018....
Because there are nine students and one school employee dead from school shootings this year...
Because there have been many other people wounded in school shootings this year...
Because active shooter drills are now common place in elementary schools...
Because we're teaching kids to run at shooters and then praise them as heroes, but are forgetting to mourn that necessity...
Because we have a generation of kids who view school shootings as just the way things have always been...
Because we still haven't done anything of substance to stop them...
Because chances are, we will still do nothing about this one...

Because I'm tired...

It bears repeating - From a post at the beginning of this blog:

--------------------

I'm tired.  I'm tired of this topic continuing to come up.  I'm tired of us continuing to have the same response - thoughts and prayers, then talking at each other, then a whole lot of nothing, and it's forgotten until we move on to the next one.

When I started this blog, my second post was a repost of a Facebook message on the Second Amendment in response to the Parkland, Florida school shooting.  There have only been 54 days in between these posts.  And here we are again, with a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas.  And I haven't even touched on all of the school shootings that have occurred.  There have been 5 other school shootings in the interim, just not to the same scope.

We have an addiction to guns in this country that causes us to look at anything else except gun control as a possible solution.  It's far past time we put everything on the table.  We should be looking at mental health care.  We should be looking at bullying.  We should be looking at the family structure.  We should be looking at socio-economic status and mobility.  AND we should be looking at sensible gun control.  We're a big country and pretty good at multi-tasking.  We're more than capable of looking at it all.

But I'm too tired to write anymore on this.  Who knows what good it does at this point.  In lieu of further debate, I'm just going to post facts and let them speak for themselves.

• On an average day, 96 Americans are killed with guns.
• On average, there are nearly 13,000 gun homicides a year in the United States.
• For every one person killed with guns, two more are injured.
• 62% of firearm deaths in the United States are suicides.
• Seven children and teens are killed with guns in the United States on an average day.
• In an average month, 50 women are shot to death by an intimate partner in the United States.
• America's gun homicide rate is more than 25 times the average of other high-income countries.
• The United States accounts for 46% of the population, but 82% of the gun deaths.
• Background checks have blocked over 3 million gun sales to prohibited people.
• Black men are 13 times more likely than white men to be shot and killed with guns.
• The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of the woman being killed by five times.

https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-by-the-numbers/

--------------------

Until it's heard...
Until we stop pretending like it will go away...
Until we do something, anything...
Until we care more about people than things...
Until we listen more to constituents than to special interest groups...

Until the next time...hopefully with a much longer gap in between

--------------------

There have been 582 mass shootings in America in the 335 days so far in 2021.

Humbling perspective.

If only we'd learn, someday soon...

Prop Guns and Empathy

The set of Rust

Last Thursday, October 21, 2021, local authorities responded to an incident at the Bonanza Creek Ranch set for the upcoming film Rust, following a 1:50 pm 9-1-1 emergency call.  The called indicated a person had been shot on set.  In fact, the cinematographer, Haylna Hutchins, had been fatally shot and the director, Joel Souza, had been injured when the film’s star, Alex Baldwin, fired what he assumed was a prop gun on the set, as was required by the scene. 

Hutchins was airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital, where she died from her injuries. She was 42. 

In the days following the accident, we are still learning much about the circumstances of the shooting.  The gun was one of three that the film's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez, had set on a cart outside the building where a scene was being acted, according to the records. Assistant Director Dave Halls grabbed the gun from the cart and brought it inside to Baldwin, unaware that it was loaded with live rounds, a detective wrote in the search warrant application.  He told Baldwin that the gun was "cold," meaning that it did not have live rounds and was safe to use in the shot. 

We also learned much that is unsettling. The gun had previously misfired twice. There were allegations of unsafe behavior against the assistant director on other shoots. This particular shoot was alleged to have cut corners in production.

All things that should be investigated. All concerns to be raised and settled. 

But we have to talk about the shocking lack of empathy I’ve seen in the discussion of this accident in recent days. We seem to have lost the ability to empathize with anyone who is not in our tribe.  To be unable to even raise the slightest sympathy for someone we disagree with. 

What I’ve seen, is a shocking number of people nearly outright mocking Baldwin for his part in this horrific tragedy. Schadenfreude writ large, with some attributing the accident as karma for his position on gun control, for his liberal beliefs.  Some not knowing how a film set or theater stage works, and sending out true but trite maxims like “always assume a gun is loaded.”

You can disagree with Baldwin, politically, religiously, socially. You can find him brusque and abrasive as he has been in the past. You can do all these things and still recognize that he is grieving as well and that this incident will haunt him for the remainder of his days. 

Because this isn’t his fault.  Nor should he be held ultimately accountable for it.  At least not based on what we know now. 

From all reports on set, Baldwin had been extremely careful with the guns on set. 

The film industry standard has already been that “blanks can kill. Treat every gun as if it were loaded.”  Actors and crew are given gun training and are told to aim off axis or to aim slightly away from the other subject. 

Armorers or prop masters handling weapons are supposed to have licensing and permits from the state of production. The gun is supposed to be fetched from the safe and checked to see if there is ammunition in the weapon, often checking with a flashlight to make sure it is clear. If the gun is handed from the armorer to a props master, the props master repeats the check. The gun is then checked again in the presence of the assistant director.  If the real weapon is used for the scene without any type of ammunition in it, it is handed to the actor as “gun cold.”  If it is loaded with the specially prepared blanks with the tips removed, it is handed to the actor as “gun hot.”

All this is done, because at the end of the day, the actor in the scene has to trust 100% that when a gun is handed to them for the scene, it’s safe and ready. This is especially true for live theater where there is no time on stage for the actor to preform a check themselves, but it is also true for the film set.   The actor has to trust the crew is doing their job and keeping everyone safe. 

Baldwin was handed a weapon that he was told was “cold” or completely unloaded.  He rehearsed the scene, as he has done a thousand times before. And now he will be haunted for the rest of his life. 

No one deserves to go through that. 

We can and we should not wish that on anyone. We can and we should sympathize with him, because he’s human. It’s the bare minimum of human decency. 

Let’s learn to be able to disagree with and even dislike some people, but let’s not lose our humanity. Cause if we don’t, what’s the point of all this anymore?

Use of Deadly Force

Not two weeks after the conclusion of the Botham Jean trial, there is another fatal shooting by the police of an innocent bystander in their home.  Atatiana Jefferson was killed by a Fort Worth police officer over the weekend by a Fort Worth police officer.

It started with a non-emergency call to the police by a concerned neighbor.  Jefferson's lights were on and the door was open.  The neighbor was requesting a welfare check.

When the police arrived, instead of knocking on the door, they searched around outside first.  While in the back yard, an officer saw someone standing near a window.  The officer gave a short verbal warning "Put your hands up! Show me your hands!" seconds before opening fire.  "Perceiving a threat, the officer drew his duty weapon and fired one shot striking the person inside the residence."

Jefferson was pronounced dead at the scene.  From the family attorney, we have learned that Jefferson was inside playing video games with her eight-year-old nephew.  When she thought she heard a prowler outside, she went to the bedroom window to see what was happening and was then shot by the officer.

The officer, Aaron Dean, resigned from the Fort Worth police department and has been charged with the murder of Jefferson.

This second case in two years time where unsuspecting civilians have been fatally shot in their own homes by the police raises serious questions regarding police training and the use of deadly force.

For starters, in the Jefferson case, why on a non-emergency call for a welfare check was the first step not just to knock on the door, announce police presence, and ask if everything was ok?

Why did the officer never announce that he represented the police?

Why would the police go around inspecting the outside of the place without first trying to establish contact on a welfare check?

Most importantly, why was the use of deadly force even considered as an option when the period between warning and firing gave no time for response?

Are our police so afraid of the people that everything is perceived as an immediate threat of harm?

When armed with a gun, does every situation look like it could be resolved by a bullet?

Are we training our officers to go use the gun to resolve conflicts in more instances than they should?

I know all of these questions and more are going to be dragged through the court over the coming months and year.  And they well should be.  But we should be raising them in our civil discourse as well.  These should be in the front of our conversations, requiring us to take a good hard look at our expectations for police officers and the training they are receiving.  They should be informing our local political process as we start to demand more of the community and its representative leadership.

We haven't got here by accident.  And we won't get out of here accidentally either.  It will be through persistent dedication to change.  To investigation.  To accountability.  And to action.

I pray we have the stamina for it.  I pray we can start to question the use of deadly force and the limitations that should be in place.

So we can all feel safe at home.