Day 50: What I Can't Accept.

The kids, headed to school.

Today I got a notification from Chaz's school. Apparently tomorrow they will be practicing the ALICE drill.  ALICE, in case you don't know, is the brand new and improved enhanced lockdown drill.  It stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate, and it's to be used in case there is an "active shooter" situation in their school.  The children practice alerting others to the presence of a dangerous assailant, going into lockdown, spreading information about the shooters whereabouts, fighting back if a shooter should enter their personal space, and evacuating when it's safe.

Charlotte brought it up tonight while we were teeth brushing.  She told me, rather sweetly, that kindergartners don't practice the "C."

I thought I was going to vomit.  My six-year-old daughter is talking blithely about how she wasn't trained to attack a shooter that comes in the school trying to effect a mass shooting.

The first graders are, though.

There's even a children's book they've been reading in class.  I'm Not Scared, I'm Prepared.

Well.  I tell you what.  I'm fucking scared.  I know school shootings are a reality in our country.  I know that they happen on a frighteningly regular basis.  And I know that if someone takes a gun into one of these schools, ALICE might keep the body count down, but the truth is that someone's child is going to end up dead.

Probably a lot of someone's.

And I don't accept that the best we can do about this is teach our children to throw their pencils at a gunman.  I don't accept that we're leaving our children and educators to block bullets with their bodies so that some of their classmates or students can get away.  I don't accept that the best safety we can offer is that the kindergartners don't get trained to fight, but the first graders do, because seven is old enough.

I do not accept it.

There is nothing in the world so important to me as the safety of my children.  I would melt every gun in the world into scrap metal if it would end all school shootings.  I would draw a thick black line through the second amendment on the Bill of Rights.  I would take the NRA up on it's offer regarding their cold, dead fingers if that was the only way.

Some of you don't agree with me.  Guess what?  I don't give a shit.  Our children--all our children, not just the privileged ones, but all of them--deserve to live in a world without ALICE drills.  This nonsense has gone on long enough.