I started to write something about how this week is turning out to resemble my work life before the pandemic. Scheduling snafus and spring break quartines has me holding down the fort this week, which means going into the office EVERY DAY. It’s a little bit of a shock to the system and I thought “hey! let’s write about it!” Then I opened my New York Times for Tuesday morning and read about the latest mass shooting that killed ten people in a Boulder Co grocery store. After a mass shooting targeting our Asian Americans LAST WEEK, the fact that I was at work this week didn’t really seem to matter any more.
One evening sometime last year, Michael and I were sitting on the couch enjoying some wine and TV when we heard gunfire outside. It is not unusual to hear gunfire in our neighborhood, particularly east of us. There were two hundred and sixty nine recorded homicides in Kansas City last year. The weapon of choice for those homicides was some sort of firearm. The Daily Homicide Analysis statistics page lists “argument” as a contributing factor to many of those homicides. I made up the game Gunshots or Fireworks to make light of a serious reality. Guns are routinely shot off in my neighborhood. What was different about that evening last year is that the gunfire sounded so close that I ducked my body down over the dog to lay us both out flat on the couch. The gunfire was coming from the street right in front of our house. We heard squealing tires and then silence. After a few breaths, Michael opened the front door and stepped out. Our neighbor to our right came out. We all checked on each other and then tried to figure out what had just happened in our street.
I don’t tell you this story so that you will think that I live in a ‘bad’ neighborhood or that I should move because it is dangerous. It is not a dangerous neighborhood. My street and my neighborhood are both very safe. My neighbors on all sides look out for each other. Josephine and I regularly walk our neighborhood, waving hello to the people we see. I have given cartons of eggs to half the people on my block. At least two of my neighbors have called me to let me know that they had Josephine when she was going through her Houdini phase. I have returned the favor with other neighborhood dogs. My neighborhood is safe, but not immune to violence.
No one lives in a place immune to violence.
Now there’s a truth bomb no one wanted to read, but for a number of us who grew up in rural white America and the land of suburban picket fences it is a truth bomb we need to read and take notice. We are disillusioned and trained to believe in a vision of what is safe, but that vision is crumbling because the places that we thought were supposed to be safe, places like schools, our churches, our grocery stores, are not immune to violence. Owning a gun does not make you immune to violence. You’re just more likely to be the one to cause the violence, killing a loved one and or yourself. Yet it is a shock and horror to all of us when gun violence happens in the places where we thought we were safe. The problem for me is that it is no longer a shock or horror. It is becoming a way of life. The new American Dream is to survive a day in school, to worship safely and to survive going to the grocery store. This isn’t our ‘new normal’. This is our normal.
When we wouldn’t do anything after the first mass shooting in a school where children were murdered, why would we do anything now?
