God, I’m not a parent, merely an uncle. Yet I would absolutely inconsolable if any of my nephews or nieces died from guns.
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As we’ve said a million times it was all over after Newtown.
I seriously don’t even think a dead kid changes any opinions.
Guns are a cult to a huge portion of the country.
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That’s why we need an Emmett Till moment. Nothing is done because there’s never a movement to get anything done.
Why, are there people out there asking for Mitch to get massacred?
Twice in my life I’ve had to call up my parents to make sure they were okay after a shooting/terror attack. Twice in my life I’ve had to call them up and let them know I’m okay after a mass shooting/false alarm. I’ve had to barricade my lab and look around for anything I might be able use as an improvised weapon after a false-alarm active shooter scare (sike!). After the Dayton mass shooting, I had to call my parents and let them know I hadn’t picked that evening to party at the Oregon district.
I’m a bitter grown-ass man; I can deal with this bullshit anytime, but what of the hundreds of teenagers at this high school football game? How many kids were hiding under bleachers texting “I love you mom” when shots were fired last night? How many parents are getting those messages? How many false alarms happen that don’t make the headlines (these aren’t’ any less terrifying)?
We have like a whole generation with thousands and thousands and thousands of kids and parents with severe psychological trauma. This is just mass emotional abuse all so the NRA can sell your crazed uncle another AR-15.
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Whenever there’s a mass shooting at location X, literally every parent who has a child within 20 miles of location X scrambles to make sure their child is okay. The kids all scramble to tell their parents they’re okay. Sometimes things are not okay. This happens like every week in this country. An entire generation was brought up with this shit. Shit is traumatic even if you’re miles away from the violence.
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Yup, like I didn’t have to go through most of this in school - I was just getting to high school after Columbine and frequent school shootings weren’t really a thing yet. But as a young adult there’s been enough of them that I would consider myself terrorized by it. I look for the nearest exits and shelter points in movie theaters, stadiums, subway stations, etc. I heard a couple loud pops walking on the boardwalk in Myrtle Beach - likely firecrackers, but it still had me looking around on full alert, looking over my shoulder, looking for places to jump over a rail and hide under the walkway, etc…
I also had a few nights in a row of nightmares after El Paso and Dayton.
I can’t even imagine being a kid in school now or a parent of a kid in school. It’s so fucked up. The fact that I have very close friends with kids who are 1-3 years old right now even makes me extra emotional about it and extra angry about it, because they tell me about their worries and fears and I’m sad and furious that we can’t do anything fast enough to prevent their kids from ever having to think about it.
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You hear the story of “Two shot at high school football game” and think, “Okay two people that’s not so bad in USA#1.” But there’s literally thousands of terrified patents calling their kids to make sure they’re okay. And kids calling their parents. That’s some traumatic shit for young people to deal with. To say nothing of the kids who aren’t okay.
And what about the false alarms? Those aren’t’ getting any kind of national reporting, but I guarantee it’s no less traumatic when you get that “I love you dad” text.
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Yeah definitely. This one I’m going to guess was not a random mass shooting type thing, based on the location. Pleasantville is outside AC and isn’t the best area, and Camden is a bad area as well. There’s a pretty high likelihood that this was a targeted shooting.
But, obviously given the venue, you hear gunshots, word spreads, and as you said it impacts thousands of people directly even if their loved ones were totally ok.
And this type of shit happens probably on average between 1 and 3 times a day. If instead of making the filters mass shootings with 4+ people shot, we just make it shots fired in an area where 100+ students are present and/or shots fired in an area where students are present and the news reports it, you have all those messages being sent and calls being made.
I lived a half mile away from the Parkland high school for about 7 years. At the time of the shooting, I was living in North Florida. That shooting happened on Valentine’s Day. I got in a huge argument with my girlfriend because her view was basically we need more guns and thankfully Trump will put an end to these shootings. We broke up that night lol.
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But how do you make it all the way to the girlfriend phase with someone with such extreme right views?
We pretty much didn’t talk politics. She was the only Trumpkin I knew so I figured it would be no big deal as long as we didn’t talk about it. And I didn’t think she was 
all in. I assumed she was like 50%.
Would it be inappropriate of me to say you really… dodged a bullet there?
I’ll see myself out.
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Crazy ones are good in bed obv
I do the same thing at movie theaters. I even think to myself, "Do I have a chance to survive in this seat?’
Sometimes I think about whether I would shield my kids or try to get them to the exit, based on our seats. And if course, I consider whether going to a big movie opening weekend is a good idea. I know the chances are very low that anything happens, but it’s sad that it’s even a thought.
This is incredible and so sad.
I’ve never had this thought or heard of anyone doing so. I am very lucky.
This needs to be calculated in the cost of America’s gun culture. Millions of people experiencing real stress in their lives is a real cost.
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I do this too.
Yup that too.
Unfortunately the people who love the AR-15’s don’t give a fuck about our feelings. They probably relish in the fact that we’re feeling real stress in our lives over it.
Yup, I’ve found myself thinking through exit routes and hiding spots in theaters and other public spaces. It’s a sad reality.