Active shooting situations always grab my attention and my sympathy, but until recently situations such as these hadn’t hit home for me.
While alternating between reading on my Kindle app and perusing social media last Wednesday night, I saw a friend’s Facebook post that struck me incredibly hard and made me really think about shooting situations in this country.
A little background: this particular couple and their kids are in Clovis, New Mexico and best friends with Paul.
We clicked early on, and their five girls and I bonded over vacation and board games last summer.
While they were at the county fair in Clovis, someone screamed ‘gun’ and ‘shooter’ after there had been several shootings in their area in the past few weeks.
As everyone started sprinting, the couple ensured they had their five girls – ages 6 – 13 – and began hiding in one of the barns behind metal doors.
Of course, their girls were in hysterics (I think we all would be) as they hid for the next 20 minutes. As they worried about the potential of being shot and even dying, eventually they discovered the coast was clear and made their way to their car.
Over the next couple of days, the dad stayed at home to comfort the girls as they began to process what happened.
“I hate this will permanently scar my kids,” he wrote on social media.
Fortunately, the incident did not involve gun violence (this time) and rather was a large fight that throngs of people misinterpreted as a shooting.
Their posts on social media brought me to tears that night and honestly, I just couldn’t get the situation out of my mind.
I know it didn’t involve gun violence, thank God, but how many have this year? There hasn’t been a single week in the U.S. this year without a mass shooting.
As many times as I’ve thought about writing a column about gun violence, I’ve simply never done it. Why? It’s complicated. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. Bring in partisan politics and it gets more complicated.
And honestly, I’m fortunate to have never had gun violence affect me directly unlike thousands of other people.
This weekend, the cost of school shootings was brought to the forefront while having coffee with a new friend. While chatting she mentioned she grew up in Uvalde. I took a deep breath and then she mentioned she went to Robb Elementary School, where the recent shooting took place, killing 19 students and two teachers and wounding 17 others.
I honestly was in such shock I’m not sure I said the right thing or that my comments were at all appropriate but I asked what it was like for her knowing that a place of happiness (her elementary school) would be torn down following such as a horrific event.
She simply said that it was heartbreaking and she was sure the community would be drastically different when she went back.
Drastically different. With that phrase, I can’t help but wonder if our world would be drastically different without the threat of gun violence, or violence in general. I don’t have to wonder, I know it would be.
Here’s to moving forward to the possibility of a drastically different world … one of these days.
Veigel is the Content Editor and staff reporter/ photographer for the Dublin Citizen. She can be reached at composing@ dublincitizen. com.