Uvalde (and more) Remembered

 

by Pa Rock

Grandfather

The constant flow of bloodshed in our schools is not something that we have to endure.   It is an almost totally unfettered onslaught of pestilence and savagery brought on and openly condoned by American politicians - primarily Republicans - who put the profits (and political donations) of gun manufacturers above the lives of children.  It can be stopped, and it must be stopped!

My earliest professional career was in public education, a field that I left a little over three decades ago.    Schools were different then.  At the time I moved on from teaching, automatic and semi-automatic weaponry was illegal, and things like concealed-carry and permitless-carry weren't even being discussed.   America was well-armed in the 1990's, but it had yet to cross over into the realm of guns having more rights to exist than children.

I'm not going to regurgitate the abhorrent list of school bloodshed that has ensued over the past three decades, but for me three will always will always stand out as for their absolute savagery and horror.  

One of the most brutal attacks in this steady stream of carnage came in December of 2012 when a mentally unstable young man broke into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and shot and killed twenty-six people, twenty of whom were first-graders. The shooter, who was armed with automatic weapons, walked from classroom to classroom calmly firing bullets into the bodies of little children.   I sat in my office and cried that afternoon.  Surely this would be the incident that ended this evil once and for all, I thought - but I thought wrong.

Another shooting that always surfaces when I find myself dwelling on the crimes that America inflicts on its children is the Parkland school shooting in Florida on Valentine's Day in 2019.  On that tragic day an angry former student forced his way into the high school and went on a shooting rampage with his automatic weaponry.  While that shooter took his time killing seventeen, mostly students, and wounding seventeen others,  many young people hid in  closets and under furniture in classrooms while texting their good-byes to parents and loved ones.  The horror would have been unimaginable.

But the most awful of the school shootings to me was the one that occurred in Uvalde, Texas, at the Robb Elementary School one year ago yesterday.   That one felt personal.  The killer, a mentally disturbed young man with automatic weapons, who was also a former student at the school, managed to get into the building and wipe out a large, combined classroom of fourth-grade students and their two teahers.   The shooter had plenty of time to fire multiple shots into the ten-year-olds because police stalled for nearly an hour before entering the classroom.   They were scared of the shooter's automatic weapons.

The body count in Uvalde was 19 students (10-year-olds), two teachers, and seventeen more students wounded.  Many of the wounded survived by lying on the floors in the blood of their dead classmates and pretending to be dead.  The shooter then calmly waited on the police to finally arrive and kill him.

I have six grandchildren, four boys and two girls.   At the time of the Uvalde shooting, my granddaughters were both ten-years-old and in fourth grade - one in Oregon and the other in Kansas.  That shooting made it very real for me, and now, every day, I worry about my grandchildren.  It is a burden that no one should have to carry, yet school shootings become more commonplace by the day.

Shame on the politicians who continue to support this madness.   They, too, are lying in blood and pretending to be dead to the world around them!

And they, too, are as evil as the angry young men who are using weapons of war to inflict their rage on little children who want nothing more than to go to school and be happy.

And shame on the rest of us for standing by and allowing this madness to continue!