Melt the Fuckers Down

34.

Thirty four mass shooting incidents since January 1 of this year.

For fucks sake, there’ve only been 53 days in the year so far.

And 34 of those days, there’s been a shooting that’s killed or injured 4 or more people.

What.

The.

FUCK.

Seriously.

What the fuck is wrong with America?

When did it become so commonplace to just kill each other, all willy-nilly, like we’re some kind of war zone?

When did we stop caring about each other, about our children?

When did we decide that our ‘right’ to own weapons of war, weapons of mass murder, trumped the right of our children to not die in their classrooms?

It’s bullshit.

UTTER FUCKING BULLSHIT.

Now I’m not completely anti-gun. I grew up in Ohio. RURAL OHIO. Hunting was just a way of life for us. My dad was a card carrying NRA member who was an incredible shot. But he had strict rules about what you could or couldn’t do with a gun.

He turned in people who hunted without a license.

He only shot what he knew we were going to be able to eat.

And he turned in his NRA membership when they, in his words, “stopped standing for the right to hunt animals and protect yourself and started pushing for the right to start hunting people.”

He still hunted though, for meat. And I hunted with him.

I took my first deer at 12 years old, and drug that big ole’ rack of meat out of the woods [with dad helping me over the rocky and uphill parts]. We ate all winter from that animal, and I was so proud of myself for contributing to the household.

I grew up hunting, and I understand the reality of guns. I’ve watched bullets kill animals. And I’ve seen the power of semi-automatic weapons rip through the targets at the shooting range.

I asked my dad one night, when we were at Target World, if I could try shooting one of them, and he looked at me with a stern look that bordered on hostile, and said firmly, “Absolutely not. There is no reason for anyone to shoot one of those for fun or hunting. You want to use that weapon, join the military. Until then, I don’t want you touching one. Period.”

And that was that.

He never spoke of automatic or semi-automatic weapons again.

He didn’t have to.

His entire gun philosophy was summed up in that one statement.

I agree with him.

He’d be shocked. We never agreed on much. But I’m right with him on this one.

No one, outside the military, has a valid need for weapons like that. Period.

We’ve seen what they can do.

We saw it at Columbine.

The Aurora Movie Theatre.

The Pulse Nightclub.

The Massacre in Vegas.

Parkland High School.

And countless others.

It’s terrifying.

I was in my office when I heard about the Parkland shooting, and you know what I did? I started looking around to formulate a plan of what I’d do if a mass shooting were to happen where I work. My office is in a little room just inside the front door of a community computer lab. There are three windows and a hollow wood door. The walls are just painted drywall. There is no protection.

If a shooter were to come into our building, I’m fucked.

I’d be the first one shot.

There’s nowhere to hide.

And that’s terrifying.

My side job is at a Regional Performing Arts Center. Last night, we were talking about this very thing, and I admitted that I’ve had a plan ever since the Pulse shooting. If I can get to the supply closet or the janitor’s closet, I’m going in there and locking the door from the inside, because they go deep under the steps, which are metal, and could possibly deflect bullets. If I can’t get to one of those safe[ish] places, welp, I’m fucked. Again.

I shouldn’t have to be afraid to be at work.

I shouldn’t be afraid to travel.

I shouldn’t be afraid that my amazing, intelligent, too innocent for his own good, on the spectrum nephew has to go to school every day.

Seriously.

I am scared to death every single day, thinking that something could happen to that kid. I love him with all my heart, and the thought of him in a lockdown, not understanding what’s happening, possibly not complying and putting himself at risk because he doesn’t understand why hiding and being silent is so important, not comprehending that a person could be so evil as to try to kill his classmates in their own school….it breaks my heart into a zillion pieces.

It’s BULLSHIT.

Utter fucking bullshit.

My nephews’ right to be safe at school should trump anyone’s desire to own one of these guns. I have another nephew who is only a baby. What will school look like by the time he’s old enough to attend? Will his tiny body have to haul around a bulletproof backpack? Will his teacher have to be armed in the classroom? Will his school be just like the schools in war-zones, militarized and fortified, with soldiers standing guard?

What. The. Fuck.

That isn’t a solution.

It’s going to fuck with these kids heads if they grow up with schools like that.

They deserve safety.

They deserve a childhood.

They deserve not to bury their friends.

We deserve not to have to worry about burying our kids because they went to school and ended up dead.

We deserve better.

Our kids deserve better.

I’m not advocating for taking away all guns. Not at all. Hunting is a thing. I get it. Shooting targets is a thing I quite enjoyed as a teen. I get it.

But these semi-automatic killing machines?

To quote my father, “Absolutely not. There is no reason for anyone to shoot one of those for fun or hunting.”

Melt the fuckers down. All of them.

Melt them down and make memorials out of them.

Every time one is found, taken off the streets, turned in….

Melt it down.

Make it stop.

MAKE.

IT.

STOP.

Before any more of our children end up in the ground.