In seven hours, I have to tell my son.
He went to bed at 9 p.m., because he’s 12 and it’s a school night, before I saw the news alerts rolling in: A shooting on Michigan State University’s campus. The shooter still on the loose. One person, reportedly, slain; five at Sparrow Hospital. It’s 11:30 p.m., and I’m watching the news. The dead now number three, and there’s a blurry picture of the shooter on my screen. I hope at least they catch the guy before my son wakes up. At least then I can say it’s over.
I can’t not tell him, not anymore. He has a phone. He has a laptop, required for school. He has friends with phones and laptops and older siblings. I had to tell him about Oxford, in November of 2021; he listened, quietly — he is not, by nature, quiet — and asked: “Are you sending me to school tomorrow?”
Will lawmakers act?
His first active shooter drill was kindergarten. I didn’t know. They didn’t have active shooter drills when I was his age. There had been a substitute teacher, clearly as blindsided by the drill as any of her young charges. Administrators used a code name to communicate the actions of the fictional shooter. It made the drill seem real. He came home that day earnestly explaining to me that his class had to hide in the bathroom, because a bad guy had been in the school.
This morning, a story penned by my colleague Clara Hendrickson led the Free Press website: “Michigan lawmakers want to curb gun violence. What gun safety researchers suggest.” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, tweeted tonight that Democrats are prepping a slate of gun reform bills. Things are different now. There’s a caucus on firearm safety. It has 50 members.
It’s too early to know if the laws supported by vast majorities of Michiganders but blocked by right-wing politicians and the gun lobby — universal background checks, red flag and safe storage laws — could have stopped it. We know what happened, but we don’t know how. We don’t know why.
After dinner tonight, we watched an episode of a sitcom we’ve been streaming. I paused the show to explain a grown-up joke to my son, and he laughed and laughed, delighted, for once, to be inside the circle of adulthood.
It’s six and a half hours until I have to tell him.
Growing up with these tragedies
This isn’t the first time; it won’t be the last. I know what I’m supposed to say. I’m meant to be empathetic but matter of fact, to validate his feelings, but make him feel safe. I’m told to watch him for signs of trauma. I have to keep my cool. If I lose it, he will, too.
The children at MSU are older than he is, six or 10 or 12 years; a gulf to him, to me, the blink of an eye. Wasn’t it just yesterday that he took his first steps?
More:3 Michigan State University shooting victims identified: What we know
Last month, my son saw footage on YouTube of the Uvalde shooter, a kid running away, down the school hall. He looked that child up, afterwards. He thinks that child died.
He told me, later, what he’d seen. At first he thought it was a fake. Then he was caught, unable to turn away. Why would anyone put that footage online? Why would anyone watch it on purpose? Why won’t anyone make it stop?
“To give a little context, I saw some footage of the Uvalde, Tex., Robb Elementary School shooting on YouTube,” he wrote last month. “What I saw definitely scared me. Then I thought … why is gun violence still happening? Why is this happening? Why do politicians pretty much completely ignore it? Like it didn’t happen. Like a dozen kids didn’t just die?
“This needs to stop. Politicians need to stop choosing money over death. What soul do you have if you let kids die, and teachers, and as a matter of fact regular people, die, and choose money?”
It’s six hours, now, until I have to tell him, and my newsroom is reporting that the shooter has killed himself, another thing I’ll struggle to explain.
“They just do that,” I’ll say. “I don’t know why. I don’t know why they do any of it.”
This time, I can tell him, the people in Lansing are listening. They’re prepping some new laws. They’re going to pass those bills, and the governor will sign them. Would those laws have made a difference?
“We don’t know,” I’ll tell him, “but it can’t get worse. We need to do everything we can. Whatever we can.”
Because he’s right: This needs to stop.
Nancy Kaffer is a Detroit Free Press columnist. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com.
Story Credit: usatoday.com