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The New Normal of Gun Violence in My America
I live in a small town an hour from Chicago. It is peaceful here. Quiet.
But yesterday morning, the clear spring sky was buzzing with helicopters. Access to the high school was cordoned off by police squad cars and SWAT vehicles. Someone with a rifle, it was reported, had entered the school at 6:30 a.m. By 9:00 a.m., the school had been thoroughly swept, the culprit found: a young man with a baseball bat.
Even after the all-clear, many parents chose to keep their children home. Inside. Not because something did happen, but because it could have.
As I walked my neighborhood yesterday morning, I noted the empty streets and eerie silence that had fallen on the stunning April day. And I wondered about the conversations that were taking place between parents and children behind my neighbor’s locked doors. Conversations, thankfully, I never had to have with my own children.
Last summer, the grade school down the street saw similar activity. The school was not in session. No children were on the grounds. But somewhere in the woods surrounding the school, there was a man with a gun. Ominous armored vehicles roared into the parking lot. Helicopters fluttered overhead. SWAT teams spread out, while police kept curious onlookers a safe distance away. After hours of tension, the body of the man with the…
