Stop school shootings! Echo opinion from Connecticut

Echo blog and opinion published in the Connecticut Stamford-Advocate ~ stop school gun violence!

The announcement came over the school's public address system.

“This is a lockdown.”

I thought of all the things the officer told us the night before. Lock the door. Turn off the lights. Pull the shade down on the door. Stay away from the windows. STOP talking.
Apparently, active shooters keep on moving when they can’t get into a room and/or they think no one is in there.

I thought we could thank the Parkland kids for this quiet we’d been experiencing. And now, there’s Texas. I sat in the car quietly, listening to the numbers roll in. Please, God, let it just be eight. Eight is enough. But then there were nine, and one teacher. God, where are you?

This has special resonance for me because I have a junior in high school. One newspaper reports that 2018 has been deadlier for schoolchildren than for the military. It’s also been noted that the Santa Fe shooting was the second in one week, the third in May and the 16th so far this year, at least, before Santa Fe. I can’t help thinking, like most of America, how many more will there be?

More than 200,000 students in 200 schools across this country have been affected by gun violence since Columbine, including our own sweet first-graders in Newtown. Now, add Texas.

For a few minutes we chatted, in a room with beautiful, donated prom gowns around us, promising such happy times, trying not to think about all the other kinds. What life has become, teaching little kids to stand on toilets and hide in closets. Then I realized, shut up. “Sssssh,” I said loudly, as much to myself as everyone else.

Of course, this was just a drill but you couldn’t help feeling, what if this is for real? Standing there at Stamford High behind a rack of dresses, at this special event to help girls get prom gowns who otherwise might not be able to, my heart beating so loudly I could almost hear it, I thought about my son. What if we heard shots in the hallway? Screams of anguish and pain, like at Parkland. Or Sante Fe. I thought I might throw up.

I’m now having conversations with my son about staying away from windows and crouching in a corner. The officer said that we should talk to our kids so they know what to do if the unspeakable happens.

How did this become so normal? Even Sarah Sanders, who seems so hardened most of the time, broke down when a 13-year-old at a recent press briefing asked how he could go to school and still be safe.

Instead of talking about which one of us is going to return his tux for prom, we’re focusing on how to stay alive in the classroom. 

A school in Pennsylvania wanted to arm each classroom with a bucket of rocks, so students can throw them at a shooter. Someone after Santa Fe suggested removing doors and exits. Someone else blamed abortion. Are you kidding me? All of which, about as effective as arming the teachers, wouldn’t you say? (HELLO? What about eliminating easy access to guns in our society?)
But as crazy as this all seems, it’s absolutely critical. Our kids are the active shooter generation.

As much as we want to believe it can’t happen here, I don’t want to have to think every day when I drop my kid off at school, will I see him alive later today?

But I do, now.

My friend, Rabbi Jay Tel Rav, says we shouldn’t look for God in this. Things happen. I wanted an answer when my husband got cancer. There was no answer then. There’s no answer now. We somehow have to make peace with it. But how? I’m still searching.

Schools in Stamford are taking measures to make themselves more secure. Buzzers and intercoms at entrances. Doors that can’t be opened during the school day to let others in. Sign-ins and drivers’ licenses verified right in the office on a computer before allowing entry. But is it enough?

A man I met recently told me that it’s very unlikely to happen here. But just like lightning, or great white shark attacks — one in 96,000 to be struck once, and one in 12,000, twice (let’s forget about the sharks) — it seems like good odds. But who wants to play the odds with their kid?

Writer Deborah DiSesa Hirsch lives in Stamford, Conn. 

Her blog is hotmedfax2018.blogspot.com.