Mourning for Boulder

"Having someone taken through gun violence, surviving gun violence oneself, even hearing gunshots tears at our basic sense of safety, of security and of self."  - Madison Armstrong and Jennifer Carlson, New York Times

"The massacre in Boulder this week, which took the lives of ten of our neighbors, was an act of genuine evil carried out by a single individual. But societal evil flourishes whenever ordinary citizens surrender their moral duty, courage, and collective imagination to resist it for the sake of the common good." - Rev. Mark Feldmeir, St. Andrew UMC, weekly email, March 24,2021

What to say?

My daughter told me about the active shooter situation as she walked from class to home on Monday. "Don't worry, Mom," she said, "I'm safe. It's across town, and the police are on the scene." Aden knew the police were on the scene because one of her classmates had attended their meeting via Zoom, and the noise of sirens in the background drowned out her comments. The professor had to ask the young lady to mute herself, for which he later apologized. 

Aden's classmate lives across from the King Sooper's where a lone gunman murdered ten people.

Another of Aden's friends had been grocery shopping at the location, and left five minutes prior to the first shots fired. My daughter spent a long time on the phone with him on Tuesday, and with two friends who grew up with one of the young people who was killed. 

"It's harder for them," she said to me. "It's their first time."

It isn't her first time, or mine. The Arapahoe High School shooting occurred down the street from us when Aden was in (a nearby) high school, and she lost three classmates to suicide her senior year, including a childhood friend. She's angry, and sad, and numb. Rob and I spent several shaken hours responding to texts, phone calls and emails from family and friends asking if Aden was safe. Yes, I said, and no.

My Facebook feed thrust ironic memories at me whenever I braved the app this week (to ask politicians to act on guns): photos of Aden and I at the Denver march for gun control in the wake of the Parkland shooting. The juxtaposition of past and current events did little to calm my inner unrest. Nothing has improved in the last three years, despite marching, voting, protesting, and writing.

Supposedly, a large majority of America supports common-sense gun regulation. We support it, but we don't care enough to replace elected representatives who don't follow through. There's no political incentive for most Republicans to come out in favor of an assault weapons ban, or even for extended background checks. 

Why? If we care about our broken society, our traumatized young people, our sense of self, we need to vote politicians who will take weapons of war off the street in to office, and we need to fire politicians who do nothing to stop the unending massacre of our citizens.

This is normal in America, but it should not be normal. It should shock, wound, sadden, and steer us to action. Where is our will, I wonder, when my young daughter says to me, "it's worse when it's your first time"?