Have you ever had a situation that made your heart stop? A few seconds that seemed to drag on for hours? I'm thinking of a situation where maybe a child falls from the jungle gym at the park and you're paralyzed with fear of what will happen. Or maybe your dog gets loose and runs right in front of a speeding car. Until you know the child or pet is okay you experience an overwhelming sense of fear and it seems to last a lifetime, even though it's only a few seconds before you know the results.
Years ago I was working for a company that has offices all over the world. Our particular office had just started having active shooter drills. In the announcement for the drill it states that it is NOT a drill. Normally when they would have drills the managers would be notified in advance so they could plan their day accordingly.
One day the announcement went off. We learned later that someone had accidentally set it off (although, from what I'd heard, it would've been really hard for hit to have been an accident - but that's not the point here) but at the time, since no managers had been notified of a drill, there was more concern in the office that there was an actual active shooter situation. Making matters worse, it was during the time of year where employees were being given performance feedback so the timing even made sense.
My office was outside my boss's office so we closed and locked my office door and went into her office and locked that door as well while she texted other managers (we weren't supposed to call or talk to anyone so that an active shooter wouldn't know if the office was vacant or not) to see if anyone knew anything about the situation.
Meanwhile, we had a visitor who worked in our office a couple of days a week. She worked at another location within our company and their location had never done an active shooter drill so she was terrified of what was happening. She closed and locked her door, crawled under her desk and started texting family members because 1) she wanted them to know she was okay - at least in that moment - before they heard about the active shooter at the company and 2) she wanted to be sure she was able to tell her loved ones that she loved them because she thought it might be her last opportunity to do so because she didn't know if she would make it home that night.
The "drill" went on for five or ten minutes and she was terrified for all of them. They felt like an eternity, and it turns out it was a false alarm.
Then there's Uvalde. It wasn't a drill. Those students could hear the gunshots ringing out from other parts of the school. Some saw their friends and teachers shot and killed. Some called for help, desperate for help, begging for help. The terror they felt was real and it was justified. Parents and neighbors begged the police to go into the school and save the children. Some parents tried to help the children themselves when the police refused.
The terror went on for more than an hour while the police waited outside and did nothing. These are memories those children will never forget and will shape their lives going forward and it didn't have to be that way.
I read an article where a child psychologist talked to a child about Uvalde and the child said she didn't need to worry because they had drills and they knew what to do when this type of thing happened. When, not if.
It may have been in the same article where another child told her parents about an active shooter drill at school and told her parents where she had to go so that when (again, when - not if) it happened at their school, they'd know where she was and could come get her.
One of the kids at Uvalde said he pretended to be dead so that the shooter wouldn't kill him.
These are things kids shouldn't have to be dealing with. And yet, nothing is being done about it. Governor Abbot in Texas has said it's not a gun issue but rather a mental health issue. This from the man who cut funding to mental health programs and lifted most - if not all - restrictions on gun ownership. And several years ago he posted a tweet saying he was embarrassed because Texas was #2 in gun purchases behind California and told Texans to step up their gun buying.
If you believe that our leaders should lead by example, what does Abbot's words and actions suggest we should do? Nothing.
Republicans constantly complain, saying they're being silenced and being denied their first amendment right of freedom of speech but what I see is them trying to silence the opposition. Did you see what the Republicans did to Beto O'Rourke when he tried to express himself - calmly, I might add - at a news conference recently? He was told to shut up. He was called a sick son of a bitch and told to get out and was removed from the venue, simply because they weren't willing to hear a side that didn't align with their own.
Additionally, Ted Cruz was approached in a restaurant after he spoke at the NRA convention Friday night. One of his constituents tried to talk to him and he wasn't interested in a dialogue. He told the guy he didn't know what he was talking about and blamed Democrats and the media for the shootings. And then the guy was removed from the restaurant.
From personal experience I know that Ted Cruz does NOT want to hear from his constituents. Until a few months ago I was one of his constituents. I wrote him on two separate occasions on two separate topics. With the first one he didn't respond to me personally, he just added me to his newsletter mailer (which I promptly told him to remove me from!). The second time he literally tried to gaslight me by telling lies in his response. Apparently he considers his constituents ignorant and uninformed and thinks that because he says something that we will believe him.
I say it's time for change. We need to vote out the leaders that turn a blind eye to senseless - and preventable - murders that continue to happen under their watch. We need people like Beto O'Rourke who will fight for what's right and who isn't afraid to go up against people in power.
It it my sincere hope that the events of the last few months will motivate people who might not have otherwise voted in November to get out and vote. And support the candidates (financially - with time - or any other way you can) who work for the people and not the interest groups that fund their campaigns because no child should have to endure one second of fear that they could be shot and killed, much less endure it for more than an hour., only to have their governor say "it could've been worse".
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