So. Tired.
Written by Ashley Kelmore, Posted in Politics
Today I took a break from my Ebola preparedness work to check the news. And I saw that there was another school shooting, at a high school in the county just north of ours. My first thought was to see if this was looking like a mass fatality incident, and if it would make sense for me to call up and offer some assistance. It looks like ‘only’ two people (including the shooter) are dead, but others are severely wounded.
Are you guys tired? Because I am. I’m tired of gun violence in my community. I’m tired of the gun violence that gets the news coverage (suburban school shootings where ‘you don’t expect it’), and the gun violence that doesn’t get the news coverage (the shootings in areas where, apparently, it’s totally okay for the media to suggest that ‘you expect it’). We have an election in our state next week where there is an initiative on the ballot requiring background checks for sales at gun shows, and I will be voting for it. I love what Allison Kilkenny says in her book #Newsfail: this isn’t about gun control, this is about massacre prevention.
I don’t know how to express how frustrating this is, and how sad I am for the families, the school and the community. Some things you just can’t prevent, either because there’s nothing that can be done, or the cost of prevention would be just too high. This is not one of these instances. There are things we can do, and the costs are not too high.
[content note: guns]
