I support #GunControlNow and here’s why…
I hate guns. My husband and my adult son both own guns. They both are extremely safe with them and take every precaution to make sure nothing goes wrong. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m the exact girl who convinces myself that even a gun that’s taken apart, could accidentally go off, even though I truly know that’s not at all possible. I grew up around guns and learned the safety of guns at a very young age. Despite the fact that my husband and son own guns (no semi-automatic guns) they agree that assault rifles should be banned. No one needs an arsenal of weapons.
I’ve been posting a lot on gun reform on social media lately and there is a reason for that. I’ve not lived the horror some of these mass school shooting victims have, and my heart absolutely breaks for them. I know from my own experiences that they will carry this with them for life. They will not get over it. It will haunt them forever. It’s now a part of their life. No one deserves that. Especially not teenagers or children with their whole life ahead of them. Let me tell you a couple stories why I feel so strongly about this.
In 1994 I was a junior in high school standing in the hallway at my locker when what sounded like a book slamming against the ground startled everyone. I found out moments later, that it wasn’t a book. It was a gunshot into a classroom just a few yards from where I was standing directed at a single student. No one died and only one person was shot. But, we were rushed to the gymnasium for an hour or so until the police could secure the scene and figure out what exactly did happen. I honestly don’t remember being too terrified because back then, mass school shootings just weren’t a thing. Even trying to wrap my head around a single gunshot at school by a student was nearly impossible. School shootings just didn’t happen then. Turns out it was a freshman or sophomore mad at a bully, taking the matter into his own hands. My question then was, how did he even get a gun? Why would he ever choose to shoot someone? I still don’t understand it and every school shooting since confuses me even more.
That is story number one. My next story I have to be a lot vaguer because of HIPAA laws. I can’t name the town or state or even what exactly happened to who and where.
Not too long ago I worked in the Emergency Room of a large hospital. I’d been working at the hospital for awhile but I’d only been in the ER for about a week. I worked in registration, checking people in at the front desk, in their rooms, even being the one who admitted those coming in via ambulance, life flight and the trauma room. One day, there was a mass shooting that put us on lockdown. The shooting happened a town away but we were the largest hospital in the area. I was kind of rotating around the ER that day due to training and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Mass shootings weren’t unusual at that point, but I’d never been directly involved in the aftermath of one. Our hospital starting receiving victims via helicopter. There weren’t dozens of victims, but there were enough. The mood was frantic, shocked, terrified, you name it. Even working in the ER doesn’t prepare you for a mass shooting. Watching these people come in and SEEING them in the trauma room was difficult, to say the least.
I was then stationed at the front desk where families started coming in frantically. One man approached the desk telling me his brother had been involved and was headed to our hospital via helicopter. He gave me the brothers name, we were unable to find him in our system so my trainer disappeared into the ER behind me to see what she could find out. The man at my desk was odd, to say the least. Pacing with a woman by his side, clearly distraught, but there was something else too. Every few minutes he would stop at my desk and give me bits of information on what he knew or had heard. He was making me nervous. He wasn’t like the families wondering if their family member not answering their phone was one of the victims.
Only when I found out that this man was the presumed shooters brother, did I internally freak out as I externally tried to keep my cool. I was told to keep him in my sight, don’t let him leave, that the police were coming to talk to him but to not let on that they were. They didn’t want him to disappear. I knew through info we were getting that the brother’s name, the man standing in front of me, had already come up in the very new investigation. My only thought at this point was that the guy was already freaking me out before I knew this and now, how did I know that he wasn’t there to continue what his brother started? How did I know that he wouldn’t suddenly brand a gun and shoot me? I didn’t. At that moment, before the police approached him, there were a few minutes where I just kind of made my peace that I might be the next face on the TV screen as a victim. I was sitting in a place that I considered safe, a hospital ER with unarmed security guards, cameras, nurses, and doctors, but I didn’t feel safe. I was scared. I was scared for the people involved, the witnesses, and now for myself.
Even though things were quickly taken care of that momentary terror has haunted me for years. This particular shooting took place in a restaurant. Even though I wasn’t sitting in that restaurant, I can’t go there and I don’t even live in the same state any longer. I can’t go in any of them because I know too many details and have too many visions of the aftermath replaying in my head of that day. I still remember exactly how I felt not knowing what this guy was there for and if I would be next because maybe, for all I knew, he was involved. I’ll live with that terror forever. I’ll live with those images forever.
I have SO many stories similar to the one above after working in healthcare for so long. A distraught soldier friend standing at my desk in a public office telling me he’s had a gun to his head multiple times over the last week and that the VA wouldn’t help, obviously battling severe PTSD, telling me he’s hidden his guns. I was scared with his erratic behavior, how did I know he wasn’t carrying right that second getting ready to take himself out right in front of me, and maybe me and everyone in the room, with him? A co-worker and neighbor killed by her friend’s boyfriend because a gun was right there. Comforting families who’s child was just killed via a gun due to gang violence. A random woman telling me that a nurse has done her wrong and wondering where she can find the nearest nurse to do what, I’ll never know. It never gets easier to see and the pain is SO real. We lived in a fucked up world.
No one needs an arsenal of weapons and if they have one, I truly think we need to ask why? It’s not even about mental illness at this point. ANYONE can snap. ANYONE can make a last-second decision that can change so many lives. A difficult day, being bullied, hardships, can turn a normal person into someone they didn’t even know they were. Even people who might never have done it normally can do something crazy. Easy access to a gun can make it too easy to choose violence.
I can’t EVER get behind guns because of the experience I’ve had. No one will change my mind on that and I guarantee, when you’re put in the position that I was, or that these kids who’ve lived through these shootings have, you’ll change your mind. My experience doesn’t even compare to the shootings that have happened to others. And if it’s affected me, imagine watching your best friend die right in front of you. Imagine texting your loved ones and saying goodbye because you’re in danger.
It’s easy to talk a big game about the 2nd amendment until you’re suddenly a part of a life-threatening situation that you have no control over. If you think that someone armed could neutralize a shooter, you’re wrong. When you’re in a moment of terror like that, you forget your own fucking name. There is zero way to think that you or a teacher scared for their life, and their student’s lives would be the one to keep your cool and be able to actually do something fast enough to save even your own life, let alone others. Every police officer shot is armed. Every president shot had armed secret service around them. It didn’t save them. Kids deserve to go to school… not a prison campus. You don’t fix guns with more guns. That’s like saying we’ll kick meth, with more meth. Do some research. No one is saying to take ALL the guns. That said, no one needs weapons of war. If you want them that bad, join the fucking military.
So, I will continue to fight for stronger gun control and safety in our country. If you can’t get on board with that, I bid you farewell cause I don’t need your ‘know all’ when you’ve never experienced it in real life. You can have all the ‘opinions’ you want but save your ‘knowledge’ for a situation you’ve actually experienced.
-A
