Back when I was in high school (and it wasn't like that was all that long ago), we didn't have the fear that the seemingly disturbed students would one day bring a gun to school and shoot us. Maybe that was a luxury that we didn't know would become a luxury.
When I was in college, that's when shootings really started to become something that was top-of-mind. That's when the Jonesboro, Ark., shootings happened. Columbine happened. There even was a shooting in the General McLane School District, right here in Erie County. Today's paper lists more than a dozen school shootings since 1997. There's something wrong with the fact that we're averaging more than one per year. Of course, the last week has helped that with three shootings since last Wednesday.
On the television this morning, some "expert" was talking about whether our schools are safe. Isn't it a pretty naive discussion? Let me sum it up, from my point of view: In some ways they're safer than they ever were before, requiring visitors to be buzzed in to have entrance to the school, and in some ways they will never be safe again. A precdence has been set and now some kids feel shooting is an easy out for their emotions. They forget about talking, hugging or counseling. They don't even take their aggressions out on a punching bag. Who ever came up with the idea that guns would provide the answers?
My daughter is a few years away from going to school in the traditional sense. Yet when I heard about the shooting yesterday, I had this horrible thought about what a bullet, traveling at such a high velocity, would do to her little body. She wouldn't stand a chance. It makes me tear up to even think of this.
I can't imagine what it's like to be a parent whose child was killed in such a senseless shooting. In the Monday shooting in Amish county, the school was seemingly picked at random. There were girls there and it was accessible. But the students in that school had never done anything to the shooter. They just happened to be a victim of circumstance. How do you comfort a parent who has lost their child due to circumstance? A child who did nothing wrong?
It's awful. Just plain awful.