A school shooting has echoes in more than just the school halls
Cop cars surround a school in a typical American town on a typical American day. Crying parents and children are reunited and embrace with renewed affection and a palpable sigh of relief, My child is safe.
Other parents are not so lucky, the news rarely plays the screams of the people who waited outside the school, watching other parents and children being reunited only to find that they will be left without. Just another typical American day.
There were 488 Mass shootings in America in 2024 according to the BBC. Gun violence has become an unfortunate daily affair for most Americans, so much so it’s impossible to name all the shootings, so we only gauge which to remember based on body count or the ones we were at. Children are not the only ones being turned into canon fodder to increase bottom lines. 1 in 15 adults in the US has been at the scene of a mass shooting. Sandy Hook 2012- 26 dead, Parkland 2018- 17 dead, Vegas Music Festival 2017- 58 dead. Austin Texas SXSW 2018- None dead, one writer traumatized.
I still walk by the building I was at when it happened. An old Austin relic, 3 stories tall, the tan bricks darkened by debris and age. It’s 3 rows of windows stare back at me empty and cold. Dark wooden accents envelop the glass panes around the door, chipped and stained with who only knows what. The downtown building still has ghosts of parties past lingering in every shadow, a once lively dance club it was now closed down due to Covid but the bullet holes remain. A mere 2 feet from exactly where I was standing when the shots rang out, 3 bullet holes mar the glass around the door I was working at as a doorgirl during that warm March. It was a typical day at the grungy basement bar with sticky floors and the stale smell of armpit BO, drakkar noir, and mildew. We used to light incense and cover the floor in Fabuloso to try and hide the stench, but nothing worked. Didn’t matter the people would still come to dance. The bass was bumping by the time I took my place at the door, it was around 4 pm warm and sunny. People filled the streets and the mission of the day was to drink while working but not get too drunk, snort lines in the bathroom on my breaks to make sure I didn’t get too drunk, and get through my day shift so I could go party even more after work. The plan I was making in my head for the evening I wanted to have was interrupted by a sudden-
Crack
Crack Crack Crack
There was only a brief pause between the first shot and the next series of gunfire. This is the part where you want me to say “Time stood still” but it didn’t. I had grown up in Texas my entire life, and I knew from the sound of the gun that it was not automatic or even semi-automatic, I have no idea why I found this comforting at the time but I did.
Two young women hid behind the open glass door I was standing in front of. They had to be in their early 20s, dressed for a festival their clothes had little ballistic protection. Their ring-clad hands covered their mouths and their long black hair shrouded their shoulders as they held each other, the picture of happy youths if it weren’t for the lead flying. I can still hear the whimpers and their shrill screams as more shots rang out. I knew I needed to get inside, but I had to look into the faces of the girls hiding behind the glass-paned door before I shut it- thus taking away what little protection they had. I groaned aloud and reached around the door to grab them by their shirts and drag them inside, once safely inside the basement with the door locked the real problem started.
I do not speak to anyone who worked at that bar anymore. Mostly because we all went off in different directions life-wise, but the main reason is because they are stupid cunts.
When the terrified young women and I walked down the stairs I was met with disgust and anger.
“Why would you let anyone in?? They could have been the shooter!!” “You could have got all of us killed!!!” “You are fucking stupid, I can’t believe you did that!!!” My coworkers screamed at me, but explaining to cokeheads that you knew you were safe because it wasn’t a gun that could do real damage and that the shots were going in a different direction when you grabbed two innocents from a shitty hiding place, doesn’t have the kinda logic they can follow. Hell, the sentiment in itself is illogical, but we all process grief in different ways.
A terrifying statistic relayed to us by the University of Colorado Boulder says that 1 in 15 adults in the US have been on the scene of a mass shooting, what they don’t mention is that as adults, we have better-developed situational awareness and more mental resources at our disposal. It means we also have a better chance of getting out alive.
In the face of grief, some people hold their families closer. Some buy a new gun. Some choose to stay home on the weekends, I personally went out and got blackout drunk and did drugs about it, but what we all have in common is the general ennui of seeing another school surrounded by police.
We watched the videos of cops at the Uvalde school shooting 2022 stand by as 19 students and 2 teachers were gunned down in their classroom only feet away from men who swore an oath to protect their communities, a complete fabrication of an oath according to the Supreme Court. In Castle Rock vs. Gonzalez 2005 the Supreme Court ruled that police have no specific obligation to save anyone for any reason. Deshaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services 1989, found that the “state did not have a special obligation to protect a citizen against harms it did not create.” The government has no obligation to protect you or prevent your preventable death. The same government will not pass laws to save children’s bodies from being ripped apart by a 45mm round in the middle of science class. Which begs two questions, who the hell can save us? And what the fuck are cops and the government fucking for?
We have screamed for gun reform and common sense gun laws. We have seen the parents holding signs with pictures of their martyred babies begging politicians to help them save their remaining children, and no one in our government has listened. And let’s face it. We stopped listening too. We will still go to work, scroll past the next news story, and keep on hustling. Our children are trained and prepped to handle a war zone and no one cares, god forbid someone does something other than drown our timelines and fyps in thoughts and prayers. Our outrage has dwindled down to a small flickering flame, barely visible to the metaphorical naked eye. Politicians fill their pockets with gun lobby contributions and donate extra money to safe private schools where their children will be out of reach of the American Danger. The ridiculous, hysterical, mindblowing injustice of it all leaves this writer perplexed and angered.
We have screamed for gun reform and common sense gun laws. We have seen the parents holding signs with pictures of their martyred babies begging politicians to help them save their remaining children, and no one in our government has listened. And let’s face it. We stopped listening too. We will still go to work, scroll past the next news story, and keep on hustling. Our children are trained and prepped to handle a war zone and no one cares, god forbid someone does something other than drown our timelines and fyps in thoughts and prayers. Our outrage has dwindled down to a small flickering flame, barely visible to the metaphorical naked eye. Politicians fill their pockets with gun lobby contributions and donate extra money to safe private schools where their children will be out of reach of the American Danger. The ridiculous, hysterical, mindblowing injustice of it all leaves this writer perplexed and angered.
