I made a video about the latest revelations about the Robb Elementary Massacre. It’s hard to watch. And I cry. And I am sorry. I am sorry for all of us. You can watch it right here.
Here’s a few thoughts to go along with the video.
I remember teaching my three babies how to sleep through the night. I’d sit in the hall and listen to them cry. It made me physically ill. People told me babies had to learn how to self-soothe. And I think they’re right. But I could only let them cry alone for a little while before rushing into the room.
We know now that Robb Elementary parents could hear their kid’s cries and the sound of gunfire. The fence that was supposed to keep active shooters out, kept some parents out. They tried to cut a hole through it. Many parents tried to rush into the school, into the room because they knew police weren’t doing anything. But the police outside the school tackled, handcuffed and pepper sprayed the parents. One mother begged to be let out of her handcuffs, ran away from the police, found another way into the school and got her children out herself.
The police inside the school stood in the hall, listened to the children cry, listened to the gun go off, and waited. Children inside the classroom called 911 during the entire duration of the attack. One child smeared herself with her friends blood to try and save herself from being shot dead. The children called 911 again and again, one listed how many children were still alive. The number went down as the attack went on. The police waited for forty minutes. They waited until the crying stopped.
Almost all the kids could have been saved. And if the parents had been allowed into the school when cops would not save them, some of them could have been saved even if some parents died. That is a choice a parent will make again and again. Uvalde parents were denied even that.
We know now that if we wait until an active shooter is in our kid’s classrooms, WE WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO SAVE THEM WHEN THE POLICE REFUSE. Even if for some reason we could get to the school while they were being killed! The cops that stopped the parents were armed with the same kind of gun the parents could hear killing their children. Gun companies saw their stock prices soar before parents had even identified their children’s bodies.
They were illegal from 1994 until 2004. During that period, mass shootings went down and the number of victims per mass shooting went down. Since 2009, the deadliest mass shootings in America - now including the Robb Elementary Massacre - were carried out with a semiautomatic rifle.
Semiautomatic weapons can be illegal again. Now. We have to do it for the parents who were assaulted by the state while trying to save their children from legal weapons of war. We need to push past politicians, police and gun company shareholders RIGHT NOW to save our kids. We need to save children from the people profiting off the continued legalization of weapons of war. We need to rush into the room.
The newsletter I was originally publishing today was about how to do that, but I’m holding it till Sunday.
Today no longer feels like a day for solutions. It’s a day of sorrow.
