So Free. So Brave.

Got the text from my HS junior today. The new American rite of passage – the lockdown that is not a drill. Cops with shotguns and K9 units sweeping the campus.

This is because in the United States, we prioritize the rights of an inanimate object – a gun – over the safety of children and schools. Our elected leaders cannot enact meaningful legislation or regulation to prevent this sort of thing from happening over and over again because the NRA – the lobby for the gun manufacturers – has weaponized the Constitution to enable and ensure that any idiot can – nay SHOULD – own military hardware.

It didn’t used to be this way.

This didn’t happen during the economic and political turmoil of the 70s. It didn’t happen during the coke-fueled 80s. It didn’t happen in the 90s.

Not like this, anyway.

I can tell you that I don’t feel free when my kid texts me that there are cops everywhere and that they are in lockdown and it’s not a drill. I don’t feel very free when my kid tells me that she’s scared. I can earnestly explain to you that I don’t feel like this is the greatest country on Earth right now at this moment because I have friends and family who live in other G7 countries and they send their kids to school and don’t have to worry about this.

I do not feel free having to worry about this. Why do the freedoms and liberties of guns come before the freedoms and liberties of my family? Why does my child not have the freedom from this sort of abject terror?