My kids and I had the talk -- about mass shootings
My kids and I had the talk -- about mass shootings
Talk to your kids about mass shootings, before it’s too late.
Content warning: This series is a running bit, but there’s no attempt at humor this time. Just rage and despair. If you want or need something lighter, you can find heavy but at least funny entries here and here.
INT. PLAYROOM — EVENING
Messy, carpeted play area, replete with dolls, blocks, trucks, and action figures, in lower level of cool, damp, vintage six-unit condo building in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Soft lighting illuminates two pajama-clad children, a six-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy, engaged in a tug-of-war over a toy neither likes.
A father — sullen, stocky, menacing, early forties — scours the news on his phone. The three-year-old, teeming with special birthday donut, begins screeching like a hyena, prompting an intervention.
FATHER
(Somber)
Hey neighbors, listen up. We need to talk about something really important.
DAUGHTER
(Agitated)
He’s not sharing!
SON
(Unhinged)
ISS MYNE!
FATHER
(Questioning why he knowingly brought children into this shithole world)
Listen guys, it doesn’t matter. Do you know what happened today? In Texas, which is among the more ridiculous places in our decaying, Godforsaken country, a big kid took a machine gun to a school and murdered nineteen little kids — like you guys — and two teachers. Can you believe that?
DAUGHTER
(Concerned)
Why?
FATHER
(Stewing)
That’s a great question. Why would somebody do something like that? The reality is we’ll probably never know what drives people to do such horrible things. Some people are just wired wrong. Some are just malicious. The more practical question is: How?
How is it possible for a kid, who’s technically not old enough to buy alcohol, to obtain an AR-15 assault rifle — the type of weapon used by soldiers in a warzone — launch an assault on an elementary school, and commit mass murder?
SON
He yuze a bwastah?
FATHER
Yeah, Bud, he used a blaster. But not a blaster like in Star Wars, where faceless, personality-less droids and storm troopers suffer superficial scratches from shiny laser beams and appear to gently fall asleep. He used the type of blaster that shoots metal projectiles at terrifying speeds, which instantly puncture, lacerate, maim, and kill.
SON
Oh.
FATHER
Yeah, oh.
Do you think the boy should’ve been able to have a blaster like that? Better yet, do you think any boy should be able to have a blaster like that?
DAUGHTER
(Uncertain)
No?
FATHER
(Didactic)
Let’s think about it another way. Are you allowed to drive a car?
DAUGHTER
No.
FATHER
Why not?
DAUGHTER
Because I don’t know how to.
FATHER
Exactly. In order to drive a car, you have to reach a certain age — usually around sixteen — then you have to do what’s called driver’s education, where a depressed middle-aged person teaches you all about the rules of driving, like what all the signs and signals mean, how to drive safely around pedestrians and cyclists and other cars, and how to yield for emergency vehicles like fire trucks and ambulances.
SON
FI-YA TRUCK! Wee-ooo-weee-ooo-weee-ooo!
FATHER
Also, the driving instructor takes you out in a special practice car, and you have to learn to drive around on real streets — with other real cars — and demonstrate you understand the rules and show you can drive safely. Then, you have to go to a super scary place called the DMV, where they first verify your vision is adequate, and then make you take a special test to prove you know all the laws, rules, and regulations.
Once you do all that, you get what’s called a driver’s license, which means the government has determined you’re qualified to operate a standard vehicle. But even then, depending on which state you live in, you’ll very likely need to obtain some form of insurance before you’re allowed to actually drive anywhere. Insurance is a risk-pooling technique designed to help people when there’s an accident. Unfortunately, car accidents are all too common, and often fatal, so it’s very important for everyone — especially inexperienced drivers — to purchase insurance.
You need to do all that just to drive a car. Pretty intense, huh? Do you know what you need to do in order to get a machine gun so you can go kill children?
DAUGHTER
(Timid)
Get a machine gun’s license?
FATHER
If only!
In many states, all you need is a pulse and a form of payment. And maybe you need to be eighteen. Then again, that requirement doesn’t stop an irresponsible “grown-up” from buying one for you.
Plus, even in states with a modicum of rules — which are still always inadequate — you’re just a quick drive away from the Wild West. For example, Illinois, where we live, theoretically has lots of limitations on who can own a gun and what type of gun they’re allowed to own. But if somebody in Illinois wanted to circumvent those rules — somebody, say, like Kyle Rittenhouse — all they’d need to do is drive a few hours in any direction into one of our bordering backwaters: Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kentucky, or Missouri.
Sure, there’s probably rules about transporting weapons across state lines, but who actually enforces them?
DAUGHTER
Police officers?
FATHER
(Sighs)
Unfortunately, our species is a trainwreck, and everything is too complex and interconnected for me to understand, let alone explain.
But here’s the simplest way I can distill down to the essence of the problem: the animating philosophy of a frightening number of “adults” in this country is, “I don’t want anybody telling me what to do, but I want to tell you what to do.”
Remember there’s a special word for people who tell you not to do things but then do those things themselves?
DAUGHTER
(Excited)
HY-PO-CRITE!!!
FATHER
Yep. This nation is chock full of hypocrites. They preach liberty, freedom, and small government but then want to legislate what you’re allowed to read, who you’re allowed to marry, whether or not you should be able to decide if you want to have a baby, and who’s allowed to vote.
But then, when you say you want to make sure lunatics aren’t able to walk around with instruments of mass murder, so your kids can go to school without having to worry about being slaughtered, they say the Second Amendment is absolute — despite literally being called a fucking amendment — and the government shouldn’t interfere in people’s private lives.
These people are not “conservatives,” because conservatism isn’t intrinsically bad. I’m financially conservative. I’d wager most “liberals” agree environmental conservatism is a good thing. I do.
“Regressives” is cleverer, but it implies there’s some overarching belief system at work. Some ideal to regress toward. But there isn’t. The “good old days” many people clamor for never existed.
No, it’s hypocrisy. Plain and simple. You can’t tell me what to do, but I can tell you what to do. Hypocrisy.
DAUGHTER
Ugh! I hate hypocrites!
SON
Meeee too!
FATHER
Yeah, well, they apparently hate us too. Lot of hate going around these days.
I mean, I wish I had some answers, but I don’t. I don’t even have a point — other than to say I don’t know what to do and the situation is almost certainly hopeless.
Almost ten years ago, before Mommy and I were married and before you guys were born, another sick boy, took the same type of machine gun, to a different elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and murdered twenty little kids and six adults. It was an absolute nightmare. The President — the good one, not the fat dumb one — cried on national TV. I cried watching him.
But in the aftermath of the tragedy, I felt something I hadn’t before: hope. Maybe, just maybe, the government would finally do something. They didn’t. And not only have the cucks in Washington not passed stricter rules and regulations since that atrocity, existing gun laws have become even more permissive. There are more guns, including AR-15s, in circulation now than ever before. The Newton shooting was declared a “hoax” by repulsive, right-wing nutjobs. The shattered parents labeled “crisis actors.”
Just look at these awful tweets.
How do you even begin to tackle a problem of this magnitude when these are the types of people you’re dealing with? That “represent” us? I certainly don’t know.
All I can do is tell you guys “I love you.” And try not to take for granted any of our time together, no matter how painful or annoying or frustrating it is. Because, in America, anything is possible.
Each time you guys go to school, you might not come back. Each time we go to Costco, we might not come back. Each time we go to the museum, or the aquarium, or the zoo, we might not come back.
It doesn’t have to be like this. In civilized countries, it isn’t. But it is here. Hopefully one day that’ll change. But I’m not holding my breath.
Pretty pathetic, huh?
DAUGHTER
(Softly)
Yeah.
SON
Dad, can we wotsch teee-veee?
FATHER
Fuck it — why not?
Could be the last time ever.
I had prepared a pretty funny piece intended for publication on Wednesday. It is, believe it or not, almost light-hearted. Upon learning of this latest national tragedy, however, a frivolous humor post felt far from appropriate. You’ll get it next week instead.
I’m going to continue trying (and failing) to be humorous and topical and insightful, regardless of the conditions, because it helps keep me, and hopefully you, sane. So next week, when the latest mass shooting happens, and I inauspiciously publish something stupid and irrelevant on the same day, it’s not because I’m insensitive or heartless or tone deaf. It’s because to wait for moments without horrible news would mean waiting forever.
Hang in there. Remember to tell your kids and your spouse and your parents and your friends you love them. It matters.
See you next week.
My kids and I had the talk -- about mass shootings
Thanks for this. Having very similar conversations just around the corner and I needed to read it.
And again, today, we are reminded how a one-year-old is too relevant, too painful.
Keep 'em safe. So scared to even take mine to America.