As AC was getting ready to leave for school this morning, I took a moment to talk to her about yesterday’s shootings at Northern Illinois University. I didn’t want her to hear about it on the bus or in the halls at school, the way she’d learned about the murder spree at VA Tech last April.
She asked to read one of the news accounts… and I let her. Facts will, hopefully, keep the nightmares at bay this time.
And then I told her that there have been crazy people always — that the worst school massacre in American history was not Columbine, or VA Tech, or UT. It was in Bath Township, MI, and it happened in 1927, almost 81 years ago.
She listened to me quietly, and then said:
Mom, I used to think the world was black and white.
Polimom: ??
AC: When I was really little, all the old pictures I saw were in black and white, and so I thought there was no color.
And that’s all she had to say about it.
Sigh…
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Update: Unsurprisingly, lots of folks are using yesterday’s tragedy to wave banners for their respective Second Amendment positions. But the truth is, neither arming the law-abiding populace nor disarming everybody will solve the problem.
What ails us isn’t nearly so simple.