we're all in the club now
but it's a club I wish didn't even exist.
TW for school shooting related content. I originally wrote this on April 16th of 2021, reflecting on the shooting at Virginia Tech on that day 2007, when I was a sophomore barely passing Econ 101. After yesterdays school shooting in Nashville, I dug this up and was horrified to find that it needed hardly any editing to make it relevant 2 years later. I’ve rewritten large sections of it, leaving out some of my more personal reflections: on a friend who was a witness, on a friend who was killed, on what it means to look at a picture of the friend who died and realize she looks so young and I feel so old and so many others have died since then. I’ll probably share more of that personal stuff later but for now I want to focus on our collective rage and use it to fuel action. Join me.
Re:Re:Re:Re: I’m alive.
I was thinking recently about what the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16th, 2007 would have been like in today’s social media / internet world. We DID obviously have the internet and even Twitter was birthed by then but it was all new enough that we were still making phone calls and emailing to check on people. It’s a thing I’ll truly never forget. Checking on your people, and realizing how many people you considered *your people*. Did anyone I know die? Did any of my people die? Did any of the people I love the most die? Did anyone I know SEE it? Did anyone I know witness? Tragedy? Death? Horror? Atrocities of a deranged and/or extreme individual owning weapons they shouldn’t and then deploying them in heinous ways due to something most of the offenders call “beliefs”??
tweet if ur alive
On March 23rd, 2021 there was another shooting somewhere [ed: YESTERDAY’s shooting in Nashville, March 27th! I barely needed to edit this to make it relevant 2 years later, and that’s part of the point]. I saw a post on twitter that said “I’m so sick of checking social media to see if my friends have been shot to death.” And I’ve never felt anything more deeply.
great ideas, maybe.
At the time of the VT shooting in 2007, I refused to consider the gun-control angle. It was, in my mind, the first “modern” times shooting, and a complete one-off. Columbine was in 1999 and in 2007, considered a complete anomaly. The VT shooting made it NOT an anomaly but there were enough years in between to make it seem like another anomaly, another exception to the rule we all live by: that school is safe and crazy people exist but usually terrorize citizens in a different more one-off manner and/or in a vague place called Not Here.
There were a lot of discussions post-April 16th about gun control. What should be done, what could be done. Lawmakers were considering a background check. Sounded logical.
But that’s where I started ignoring things. Lalala I’m trying to pass Econ, remember?! I was brought up in a conservative household, where the 2nd amendment was respected and expected. My family wanted the government out of their business and desired the freedom to bear arms, full stop, no exceptions. I was a sheltered 19-year-old - and when I say sheltered, allow me to illustrate: it wasn’t an open lean-to structure where horses hide from a light summer rain. It was a barn with closed doors, no windows, and certainly no breeding farm animals. So, naturally, I agreed with my family's views. It was a mental health issue, plainly, simply. Thus background checks! Logical! 19-year-old me knew nothing but was just…19-years-old about it. I assumed, as a newly minted voter who probably didn’t vote much (and a virgin who couldn’t drive), that the grown-ups would handle this. Don’t worry, I’ll come back to this.
ah yes, the “more guns” argument
At the time, I had a friend who had a conceal-carry license. After the initial shock of the shooting wore off in the media, they shifted attention to solving the issue - gun control laws, vague mental health needs, background checks, etc. When the coverage started, I remember this friend saying, if people like him with legal licenses to carry firearms were permitted to carry on campus, he could have changed the outcome. He wasn’t suggesting he could have “saved” everyone (idk maybe he was), but that it could have changed the outcome in some meaningful way. I remember being totally onboard with this line of thinking. I thought at the time that it WAS a good idea. He could only help in these situations - when an actual crazy person walks into Anywhere (I was going to say classroom but now we know it’s literally any place, any time, anywhere), THIS person - my trustworthy friend - with the legal right to bear arms, who has attended classes and passed test(s) and practiced using his weapon and treats it with the respect it deserves, can deploy it to protect his fellow citizens. Logical! Maybe! Dunno! I’m still 19!
it got better, right?
Fast forward 16 years. The Washington Post published an article yesterday claiming the Nashville event was the 376th shooting since Columbine, excluding events at colleges and universities, or elsewhere in our communities (so, just to be super clear, that means the number of shootings since Columbine is actually even higher, no matter how you define “a shooting”). Death tolls or “qualifying metrics” aside, this is an astonishing number of schools impacting an astonishing number of students - who are actually children, and future adults needing therapy from the trauma of their childhoods.
I won’t parrot any stats about gun ownership or conceal-carry permits, because those 376 schools tells us all we need to know: a thing that used to be an anomaly, unprecedented, unparalleled, is now a thing preceded by 376 similar things, a thing paralleled by the same thing that happened yesterday, last week, a few times last month, in the next city over, the suburbs of the same city, the 4th time in the same town.
so it’s not better?
As April 16th approaches, or anytime there’s yet another school shooting in the news, as I sit with it, ponder the meaning of it all, the hurt, the pain, the loss: I am livid over how it’s NOT BETTER. It’s WORSE. WORSE feels like putting it mildly, even. What’s WORSE than WORSE? It’s that.
It’s INFURIATING. On so many levels, I’m not even sure I’m doing justice to the thoughts and feelings. If anything is inexplicable, it might be this.
What the FUCK have we ACTUALLY done in SIXTEEN YEARS since her tragic unexpected departure from the earth to make it BETTER. For LITERALLY ANYONE.
Sometimes it feels like the answer is nothing. We’ve done jack shit to make changes that actually DO something. The numbers on school shootings, “mass casualty events,” and deaths from guns certainly make this clear. 376 school shootings since 1999! That’s appalling math for anyone who cares to do it.
and another thing.
It feels a bit like that latin phrase meaning “the thing explains itself," but bear with me, because the second part of how much worse it is, is that so many more of us now have A Day. I used to be special! In that I was one of very few people who had this specific kind of day, A Day of tragedy to remember and relive every year. It was unique, a thing only my own Hokie fam could understand and feel with me.
But now SO MANY of us have A Day. A person we lost, a knife through the heart of our community, a breach of safety and trust in fellow humans. And it feels like action, solutions, literally anything, won’t happen until every SINGLE person in this country experiences the loss and shock and etcetera shittiness of a shooting personally. It’s traumatic and tragic to watch as an outsider and of course we’re appalled and sending our hearts and thoughts and prayers out and such, good for us. But you can’t KNOW the feeling unless you experience it.
iykyk, but the bad kind.
It’s like that episode of Grey’s Anatomy, early on when George’s dad dies, and Cristina welcomes him to the club - the dead dad’s club. She says, "And you can't be in it till you're in it. You can try to understand, you can sympathize. But until you feel that loss...My dad died when I was nine. George, I'm really sorry you had to join the club.” George says he doesn’t know how to exist in a world where his dad doesn’t, and she tells him, “...that never really changes.”
It’s like THAT. You don’t know until YOU KNOW. Until someone YOU know and love is killed by a stranger with a weapon he doesn’t respect, need, or deserve. And I hate even thinking this, because it’s gross, but I fear that votes, opinions, actions, won’t change until or unless we’re all in the club. And even then…shrugs. Because we all react to tragedy differently, don’t we? So there’s never a guarantee.
I am despondent. I feel more hopeless and fatigued over all of it than any year before. I feel more anxiety about what yesterday means - and what April 16th means - more than any year before. It has NEW meaning, even. Every year that passes that I get older and my friend does not, and more people die and more people give lip service to whatever bullshit, and more children learn how to hide under desks that won’t save them from bullets. It’s just. NOT OK.
where are the grown-ups?
As a 19-year-old, I felt mostly apathy about the gun-control issue (background checks! remember?). It wasn’t about ME. I didn't particularly care personally about owning guns or not owning them. I’m wasn't a grown-up! I was 19! I wanted bigger boobs and to lose my virginity at some point! I only passed Econ because exams were cancelled that semester due to the insane unprecedented tragedy of it all! Surely the grown-ups will handle this, I thought. The grown-ups will debate, post sound bites on that new Twitter thing, discuss options, and choose something - DO SOMETHING so that this bullshit never happens again. Surely! SURELY.
bad news: we’re the grown-ups
Well, now I’m 35. Now I have friends with children in school who in addition to fire drills, are doing Active Shooter drills which truly makes my brain explode. Now WE are the grown-ups and it’s fucking terrifying. The OTHER grown-ups were supposed to fix this! Why didn’t they?! Why haven’t they?!
Is this what MY children are going to say about us? WHY HAVEN’T THEY FIXED THIS? Please let the answer be no.
this club sucks
Like Dr. Yang, I am sorry to be in this club, and I am sorry that so many people have had to join this club in the 16 years since my forced induction. I don’t know how to exist in a world where this keeps happening and none of the issues that cause these tragedies have been addressed.
but wait, there’s more
I said I was hopeless, but that’s not really true (at least, all the time) (today it’s probably more like rage, wrath, incredulity). Sometimes I do feel hopeless but recently I started consuming news differently and following different political accounts and I learned that hopelessness feels a lot like despondency, futility, depression, discouragement, and general overwhelm from all the shit going on in the world right now. So things aren’t hopeless, but things are HARD. Hard we can handle!
more than a repost on insta
Here’s some links and resources that I use to educate myself in a sustainable way for my [apparently very fragile] mental health. Join me and other grown-ups who I guess are now in charge of making this shit better. It’s us, y’all. We’re the grown-ups now and we have to do the hard stuff, ok?
Emily in your phone Substack: 1 minute politics, and meaningful action beyond signing petitions and posting angrily on social media.
EYP on Insta: A fav follow for mindset, political analysis, and getting through the sound bites to what’s actually going on and what to do about it.
EYP Public Square story highlight. And hopelessness highlight. I revisit both of these to help me overcome overwhelm, and reset any despondent thinking.
News Not Noise Substack. And on Insta. The only “news” I follow now. Great for people with anxiety who still want to be informed citizens.
That Washington Post article I referenced. Less of an article, more of a data aggregate and analysis of shootings in the US to date. Not paywalled.
House of Representatives directory. And Senate directory. Use the lookup if you don’t know your district, save their phone number, call and leave (polite yet firm) voice messages to state your opinions! This is what they’re there for! And remember the person who listens to the voicemails is a person, and doesn’t deserve your rage or insults. Use your rage to fuel calling a person you don’t know who may not answer, because we all know that’s the real struggle.
EYP story highlight for background on WHY to call your reps, and Public Square highlight for tips on engaging people around you. There are scripts to help, and it doesn’t need to take more than 3 minutes of your time, at an interval of your choosing.
This was hard to read, and to rewrite. I edited a LOT and am nervous to stop writing because it means I have to publish it. And then everyone will know 19-year-old Sara was a virgin! Almost-36 Sara doesn’t seem to care too much. If you have comments (preferably on the main topic, not the state of my virginity), I’d love to read them. It’s complicated, so be nice.
Next week I promise a return to casual toddler poop stories! For now, save those phone numbers and find a way to take your own sustainable step in the right direction. Then take a deep breath and go have a snack.
