#43 - Sandy Hook Was 10 Years Ago

I learned about the Sandy Hook shooting on Facebook. A friend of mine from dance camp lived two towns over, and she had posted a prayer as her status.

I was sitting on my bed in my crappy Ithaca apartment, reading about the latest updates on Twitter, and then my dad called because he wanted to make sure I was doing okay.

I just broke down immediately and started rattling off statistics, because I was a politics major and had recently ranted-until-I-cried to one of my friends over the fact that the 2nd amendment is currently missing a comma because the comma created a functionally different sentence, one that could not be interpreted as widely.

(Also, a fun time to remind everyone that the Constitution was a treasonous document written exclusively by land-owning white men in a room that was about 100 degrees and they were all wearing wool three-piece suits and collectively could have died of heatstroke the entire time AND THEN when they went to ratify this document, John Hancock made the excellent argument that he would only ratify it if they added an immediate addendum in the form of the Bill Of Rights because he wanted to enshrine the concept of the Constitution as a living document and for a while there we were pretty open to amendments, like, as a concept (remember when we amended the constitution to ban alcohol?), but then we put a bunch of dudes on the Supreme Court who’s preferred method of reading said document was akin to writing fanfic about what they thought the founders were really saying and we apparently just accepted that as a totally tenable legal interpretation? Sounds fake but okay!)

That was ten years ago.

And nothing has happened to make this country safer since.

And the parents of those children, who were murdered inside of their elementary school, have dedicated their lives to making sure that other parents would never have to go through what they did.

They sued Remington successfully and through legal proceedings were able to release the fact that Remington’s entire marketing strategy was to convince men that getting a gun would “give them back their manhood”. They sued Alex Jones successfully because his absolutely abhorrent lies about their families caused inextricable suffering on top of the unimaginable tragedy they had gone through. They have used the legal system the way that our government designed it to be used: individualistically holding companies responsible for their actions.

And unfortunately, for every needle they have been able to move, it has not made a tangible difference in any policy. We have not healed the wounds, we have only stared in horror as they got more severe. I’m very deeply concerned about the conspiracy theories that will arise about today’s tragedy in Texas, and I wish I could do something to prevent the harassment that will inevitably find its way to the families who are grieving an unimaginable loss.

We should not ignore the fact that the first person the Sandy Hook shooter murdered was his mother. In Texas, the shooter first shot his Grandmother before going to the school to commit mass murder.

The inaction from those in power is suffocating. It is staggering. It is inhumane and untenable. It is shameful. It is heartbreaking. It is atrocious.

And nothing that I say will ease the pain of those parents, families, or communities. The collective grief that we as a nation are experiencing is unprecedented and we have literally no leaders to guide us through this increasingly unnavigable landscape and I’m just so tired of it. I’m so tired. I’m so heartbroken and I just want to hope again.

I don’t want to send this to people’s inboxes, because that feels invasive. My voice is not necessary when the facts are still coming out, it does not alleviate the grief. But I can’t hold it in anymore, and I don’t know what to do.

I hate that they’re going to tell us to vote. They won’t do anything with those votes because once they reach Capitol Hill it becomes immediately apparent that no matter how radical you will still have to appeal to a very small subset of campaign donors. We the people have literally no influence over policy decisions, and that didn’t use to be true and it all comes back to the Citizens United decision and now Peter Thiel gets to decide American public policy and we all have to be cool with that apparently. And the courts are packed and we’re not slipping into fascism we’re barrelling down an icy hill in a car with failed brakes, and it feels like we’re screaming at the drivers to pull the e-brake and all they’re doing is pumping the ineffective brakes and going “look look I’m TRYING to brake!!” and then advising us that if we don’t brace for impact it will hurt less when we crash.

I refuse to go limp.

I refuse to lie down.

Who’s organizing the busses and plane trips to get people to (what could be with the right moves) the largest counterprotest in American history outside of the NRA conference in Texas this weekend?

Children shouldn’t have to die. That’s just true, it’s always been true, humanity moved forward because we, as humans, take care of the youngest and most vulnerable because we care. Caring is a fundamental part of being a person. We can’t stop caring, we can’t lose our humanity, and that’s why it hurts but it’s important that it hurts, because numbness will make us less human, and the fissures can’t go deeper than they already are. We have to start to heal somehow.

Schools should be safe.

And like, also just as a thing, I have this fact stuck in my head and I hate it so much but other countries attempt suicide at the same rate as Americans, but statistically, Americans are far more likely to die of suicide because they have easy access to guns, and the truth is, it’s really hard to effectively kill people with almost any other method.

In Ireland, the police don’t have guns. I know the more beautiful world is possible because I’ve seen it, it’s true everywhere but here in this one regard. The numbers are staggering. The statistics are unfathomable.

In New York, the NYPD passed rules to ensure that if an officer came forward about struggling with their mental health, the NYPD wouldn’t take their gun away (because it turned out that their fear of having the gun taken from them was the largest hurdle in getting the officers to admit they needed help). In 2019, 27 officers died by suicide and their own guns were the chosen weapon. And like, I don’t know, feels like there might be a connection between the gun manufacturers telling men they’ll be manly again if they have a gun, and the reluctance of the police to seek help if they think their gun will be taken away, and the fact that men consistently feel the need to commit physical violence to reestablish their manhood after a brush with anything deemed effeminate, and the fact that women are more likely to be murdred by their domestic partner than a stranger, and that men who commit mass shootings often have a history of violence against women. (And like. Will it end if we make all the guns pink? I wish I was kidding.)

They’re killing us instead of achieving self-actualization and uuuuh somebody somewhere is making a shitton of money off of the deaths of school children and I just think that’s really bad.

And I don’t know what to do about it, but I’m willing to try some new shit because this simply cannot continue. It can’t. We are no longer living in a functioning society and I am afraid. The subway, the grocery stores, the movie theatres, the concerts, the schools, we have to make them safe again. We have to keep going and we have to get to the other side. Bring every bill to the floor. Make them vote no and shame the shit out of them for it, hold them accountable, make their lives hell. (They reeeeally hate when people protest outside their houses, and we know where all 51 senators who are holding us hostage live.)

They work for us, we make up the country they have chosen to neglect. I refuse to suffer more grief in exchange for greed. I am so tired of being surrounded by sacrifice.