Thoughts, Prayers, and Signs: We Can’t Talk About the Florida School Shooting

Yesterday, there was another school shooting. Today, people are posting stats about mass shootings in America on social media.

In 2018, there has been a shooting every other day.

There have been X number of shootings in X number of years.

But the statistics don’t matter because we shouldn’t need stats to be appalled, to demand action. If knowing that this kind of thing happens a lot—specifically in the United States and not in other comparable countries—data points won’t sway you.

I was a 15 year-old high school student when the Columbine shooting happened. At the time it seemed strange to me that someone my age could feel so much anger and despair that they would be driven to that kind of violence. It was anomalous in my mind.

Now, I’m a teacher.

And today’s shooting seems strange to me, because it’s one of many. One snowflake in an avalanche that people who are tasked with protecting the public via creating legislation have allowed to smother our country. It’s strange, because it isn’t. I know there are mass shootings that don’t make the news or pop up on Facebook. There are too many to get worked up over all of them.

This is my first year teaching, and I’ve realized that, during the day, breaking news doesn’t reach me and my colleagues. I used to have a job where I could check my phone and the internet constantly. I could spend the day processing the events. Today, I walked out of the school where I work to find out that, once again, people were slaughtered at a school.

And it’s hard to feel anything other than disappointment and anger.

I know that a parade of dipshits will appear on TV (and in the White House press room) to tell us that we can’t politicize this and to use the deaths of innocent people as leverage to enact legislative change somehow dishonors the dead. Those dipshits are either evil, spineless, or both. And I don’t know how we can circumvent their campaign to derail a conversation that should have been settled 19 years ago.

Since I live in Washington, D.C. and have Monday off for Presidents’ Day, I’ll probably make a sign and stand in front of the Capitol. It won’t help, but I don’t know what else to do.