Been thinking about school shootings
and lockdown procedures in the wake of the Parkland massacre. I think
about disaster/crisis scenarios a lot; the habit started after I saw
Night of the Living Dead for
the first time and ever since I have gauged how zombie-proof every
building I've ever been in is. Aside from zombie apocalypse, I also
try to plan what to do for real-world problems; I work part-time as a
substitute teacher, so I've war-gamed active shooter
situations in my head. In every classroom I think about what I need
to do to secure it, where I need to be, where the students need to
be. What I need to do, or try to do, in case a shooter breaches the
room. I've never been in such a situation, obviously, I have no idea
if any of the plans I've come up with would actually work. Nor do I
know if in the event I would have the courage to do anything at all.
Here's the thing – I shouldn't have
to entertain these thoughts. No teacher, no student, should have to
entertain these thoughts. But there's an absolutely rabid obsession
over guns and the supposed sanctity of the 2nd Amendment
in this country. There's a segment of the population that values gun
ownership over lives. The 2nd Amendment may have made
sense when we were a young nation without a professional army, but
times have changed, in ways the Founders couldn't possibly have
imagined. Because of guns, we have far higher rates of murder and
suicide per capita than any other first-world nation, and because of
guns we live in terror of ourselves. We need to stop valuing guns
more than children, we need to stop valuing death more than life,
because make no mistake – those who value guns over people are the
servants of death.
