Seventeen people died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School February 14 when a 19-year-old opened fire in the hallways. The day afterwards, the Chicago Tribune published a letter from Allison Beebe urging us all to “politicize (her) death” if she were to be killed in a shooting.
“Avenge me with common sense gun laws,” she wrote. “Memorialize me with universal background checks. Put my name on the bill that bans military-grade assault weapons. Let my legacy be debated by pundits and satirized by late night hosts.”
I’m grateful she wrote it, because it seems all of the sudden a lot of gun enthusiasts and right wing figures not typically known for delicacy or sensitivity are suddenly real cautious about profaning the deaths of those killed in the Parkland, Florida shooting last week. Tomi Lahren tweeted “Can the Left let the families grieve for even 24 hours before they push their anti-gun and anti-gunowner agenda? My goodness. This isn't about a gun it's about another lunatic.” (Multiple victims of the Florida ordeal responded with decided outrage that should, if nothing else, reassure her they’re okay with the agenda being pushed.)
And then there’s our nation’s leader. President Trump had not one word to say about gun control, merely repeating bromides about healing and mental illness. Ditto the GOP—they were full of thoughts and prayers for the victims, but little else of use or substance. Hardly surprising. As firebrand Bess Kalb has pointed out, the party is deep in the pockets of the NRA—to the tune of $17 million.
So while there’s plenty of caution and religion to go around, apparently, we’re a nation tiptoeing around the subject of guns and gun violence, particularly when it comes to our nation’s schools.
Mind you, you don’t see such reticence when it comes to terrorism, or immigration or our borders or police deaths. Then, we’re happy to let ‘er rip. It’s only mass shootings, school shootings this week, that we just don’t want to jump the gun on at present.
Well let me reiterate and build upon what Ms. Beebe wrote last week. I’m a high school teacher, and I’m making my wishes as clear and loud as I can: If I’m killed in a school shooting, politicize the shit out of my death.
This is not a joke. I am not being flip about any of this. I mean every word.
If our country is too gutless to do anything about the gun epidemic plaguing our nation, our schools and our children, and if I die as a result, use my death to effect change.
I want you to send pictures of me to every newspaper, cable television station and independent weekly, with captions reading “This guy should not have died teaching grammar.”
I want you to send emails to every blowhard, family values columnist and pundit who’s made a career out of not talking about gun violence and tell them “This guy died and you need to write about it.” Get them to use my death as an example for a noble cause, or else get them to explain why they won’t get off their fat asses and explain why this still happens.
I want you to write letters to the president, to Congress, to every political official you can think of, to the effect of “Look, maybe he wasn’t Teacher of the Year but for God’s sake, a bullet in the head seems a stiff price to pay for a mere “Proficient” rating on his evaluation form.”
And by the way, don’t worry about desecrating my memory. My wife, who will be a widow should I be killed in the line of teaching, will enthusiastically back your efforts. Trust me. She’s arguably madder than I am about the idea that I have to go through shooter training as part of my routine job duties. “If I’d wanted to marry an infantryman,” she fumed to me over drinks this weekend, “especially a hot one, I’d have married that guy with the Air Force we met at your reunion. The one wth the abs.”
My father, I predict, will also give you his blessing, should he outlive his eldest son if I expire in a hail of bullets. After Parkland, he texted me “Did you hear?” He didn’t even have to specify. He knew I’d understand. He knew I’d know what he was really asking.
Look, don’t get me wrong. In any life or death situation, I hope I’d do the right thing and do what I could to save the lives of those around me. Not because it’s my job, but because it’s right. When there are children or adolescents at risk, whether we’re in a school or a shopping mall or in a church or wherever, no one would seriously argue it’s everyone for themselves.
But are we really living in a world where “Our teachers take a bullet for your kids” needs to be on page one of a school’s brochure?
Put it another way: If your kids were going to a school in a neighborhood where child molestors roamed freely, you wouldn’t tell your kids “Okay, there’s a lot of bad men around, so let’s review how to avoid getting kidnapped by one of them. And we’re going to do abduction drills once a month or so so that you’ll know what to do when and if a bad man comes near you.”
No, we wouldn’t put our kids through that. Because that would be insane. Rather, realistic goal or not, we’d immediately set to work going after the child molestors and getting them out of the neighborhood.
But the reaction to last week’s shooting consisted mainly of those in power bowing their heads silently and contemplatively while urging all of us to buy our own rifles and handguns to protect us against other people’s rifles and handguns. Which is just as insane.
Parents, political leaders and members of the community: in the event of a school shooting, I will do what I can. I don’t exactly know what that is, in all honesty. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School did plenty of preparation drills, and yet 17 people still died. That’s because there’s only so much preparation you can do, especially when under attack from a weapon that can fire dozens of rounds per second.
And they don’t cover challenges like rapid fire rifles in teacher certification courses. They don’t teach you where the blind spots are in your room, or what the psychological profile of a likely shooter is (though--here's a hint--it seems our shooters are primarily male). They don’t teach you how to calm down students crying hysterically because they think/know they’re about to die, or how to disarm an assailant or how to break a classroom window fast enough to make an exit, or where the blind spots in the hallway are or what to do if you think there’s a second or third shooter but can’t tell for certain.
None of that is part of the coursework of becoming an educator, and my guess is, if it were part of the curriculum, you’d see even fewer people signing up to become teachers than we already have today.
Members of the GOP, the NRA, gun enthusiasts and various other advocates of weapons: You want me to die protecting the nation’s schoolchildren? Fine. I will.
I just wish you’d come out and say it explicitly, instead of cloaking your wishes in sanctimonious talk about how much you respect the work I do, or with the guise of futility when you shrug your shoulders about the Second Amendment and “shit happens.” I wish you’d have the stones to tell me and my students outright that your right to own an assault weapon is more important than the lives that assault weapon will take, even if those lives are schoolchildren’s.
Nevertheless, a productive, rational, evidence-based discussion about what’s to be done concerning our shooting epidemic doesn’t seem likely, so in the meantime, I’ll keep wasp spray and a baseball bat under my desk in case someone tries to break in to mow us all down with an AR-15. I’ll keep reminding my kids where the exits are, and we’ll play games of “What if” where we speculate what direction we should run in if we hear shots from upstairs, down the hall or next door. If that’s what my job entails in the 21st century, and if that enables our legislative leaders to look the other way while the NRA thunders about “good guys with guns,” I guess I don’t have much of a choice.
Just do me a favor. During the summer break, when I’m working on curriculum and recharging after another nine months of working in what we’ll have to call a “potential crime scene," spare me the line about “Must be nice to have all that time off.” From now on, during summers I’m “on leave.”
