Capitol Offense

 I read in an article today that there have been 27 school shootings this year. 

As a teacher, I immediately did some calculating since I usually plan on about 35 weeks of instruction for my classes. That means...

-Twenty-seven school shootings averages to a school shooting about every seven days in a school year. 

-In 2022,  we could expect an active shooter to enter a school nearly every week in this country.   (More often in 2021.)

-In other words, what we are seeing is that every 1.29 weeks of school, someone is going to attempt to shoot your kids and my kids en masse. OUR kids.  And their teachers. 

This is real.  This is where we live. This is what I can expect as a teacher. This number doesn't include other public shootings (universities, grocery stores, movie theaters, concerts). 

I also read this today: our defunct senate has let a background check bill sit for two years.  Waiting in the chamber is at least some kind of an actionable effort for responsible gun control. The house passed it. 

But the senate won't. Corpulent egos with hot, flapping gums feign effort and movement within a lifeless wing. The real actions in the field take place in the Senate's efforts to protect the party. The terms never time out. Bills like HB8 illuminate the the true objective: party first, and people when it serves the party, sometimes.  Diatribes of conviction and principle and "the people" are plays made for the sake of its true goal: more seats than the other team.  The senate has become a veritable pro sports league, recruited (or at least not fired) by the people. 

We, the people, have allowed the cultivation of a profession of putting off action with words and more bogus words.  We pay them to stay in their comfortable chairs, in their air conditioned building (when they bother to show up). We pay for their special health care, as well as security staff in the workplace.   

All this safety and security for these "public servants" is funded by our tax dollars in addition to now giving our teachers and our children as tribute while they deliberate.  Our children.  We pay and lose and pray and mourn these tragedies and continue to wait for a group of people who will never be able to come to a consensus because one party cannot let the other party get any points.  

We let them stay. At the price of one shooter (and many bullets) in one of our schools every week. 

Have we had enough, yet?