Note to Salon: Horror Stories Shouldn’t Dictate Policy on Gun

When I first became a father, I once wondered what would happen if I lost my son. I have a brain that ponders things, including terrible things, and this was no exception. I immediately broke into tears and just at the thought of my precious boy being taken away from me. It was terrible enough that while my brain still goes into wondering about what I would do if terrible things happened, that’s one I’ve never revisited.

Over my time here at Bearing Arms, I’ve written about a lot of mass murders. I’ve covered Parkland, Uvalde, the Route 91 Festival massacre, Sutherland Springs, and so many more.

It’s hard not to remember holding my infant daughter while watching the news report about Sandy Hook.

I can’t say it hasn’t taken a bit of a toll on me, but that’s fine. I can deal with it.

I don’t say this for pity, though. I lay this out so that you understand exactly where I’m coming from when I address this piece from Salon, where the author talks about collecting stories from school shootings.

I’ve sat with dozens of survivors and grieving parents over the years, collecting their stories with my co-editor, Amye Archer, for “If I Don’t Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings,” an anthology of voices from school shooting survivors and families left behind.

We didn’t collect these stories just to preserve them. I’m writing this now because the waiting hasn’t ended — and neither has the violence. And across the chaos, the grief, the impossible trauma, that one word surfaced again and again. Waiting to know if their child was alive. Waiting for a name to appear. Waiting to identify a body. Waiting in an ER hallway while doctors tried to piece together the person they once tucked in at night.

I think about that word often now — especially as a parent. Because in the quiet of an ordinary day, I get to wait for my child: in the school pickup line; while she ties her shoes; through a tantrum, a story, a song. And I realize what kind of waiting I’m lucky enough to do — the kind where I already know my child is alive.

…

Gun Violence Awareness Month isn’t just about statistics or slogans. It’s about time. Time lost. Time suspended. Time that traumatizes.

While we debate laws and argue politics, what we don’t discuss enough is the stillness of reunification centers. The buzz of unanswered phones. The crowd of parents outside a school building, daring to hope, dreading what they might hear.

This year, we’ve already seen how the cycle repeats:

…

To wait is a privilege. To wait and know your child is safe, to know they are coming home — that is a blessing. And we are losing that gift in this country, again and again.

Let’s do more than pause. Let’s build a world where no one waits in vain. Where no one texts their child goodbye. Where we do more than hope. Where we act—by paying attention, by asking hard questions, by believing survivors, and by refusing to wait until it happens again.

I always find it darkly amusing when someone like the author starts talking about the politics of so-called gun violence negatively, as if they don’t politicize the incident before the shooting even stops. We know nothing about what happened, and they start calling for assault weapon bans and universal background checks.

Understand that I’m sympathetic to those who wait for word of a loved one’s safety. I can only imagine what it’s like to get news that one of the slain is your child. I know how hard it hit me when it was a dear friend, but she was still just a friend. A child is something else, something more.

But that doesn’t mean we just chuck everything out the window because people have horrible stories of waiting.

This is from Salon, which advocates for gun control on a regular basis. We know what they want, what side of the debate the author wants us to put aside.

However, we also know that guns are used to protect life far more often than they’re used to take them, even when they’re never fired.

I’m unfortunate in that I’ve put my sights on people two different times in my life. Once was to defend my own life, another to potentially defend someone else’s. Yet I didn’t have to fire either time, thankfully, but the waiting to find out if I’d have to was something Salon doesn’t talk about. They don’t talk about the waiting to find out if my family would live or die, or if my neighbor was going to live or die, because I could do nothing about it.

I won’t diminish what these parents went through because I can’t even imagine, and I’ve got a better framework than most.

But their trials shouldn’t throw out everything else in the discussion of gun rights, gun control, or anything else. That’s a guilt-trip tactic that, frankly, we’re sick of.

It’s just a variation of the “it’s for the children” claim that we eventually came to mock.

Terrible things happen, and horror stories are going to come about, but no one should decide the discussion of our rights is irrelevant simply because you feel so hard about these horror stories. That’s not how it works. 

We’re not putting aside facts, reality, or anything else because of your feelings, nor should we.

You can pontificate all you want, but you’re not doing anything except making yourself feel righteous.

We don’t care about that feeling, either.