Words fail me

As you know, I volunteer at my son's school. His elementary school. Every day for almost 4 years now.  I would be lying if I told you I didn't worry about violence like what happened yesterday in Connecticut.  You can just walk into the front door at my school. No guard. No buzz in system. No lock. The side doors are locked, but the front door? Never.  Yes, I live in a small town, but not much smaller than Newtown.

 My son still doesn't know what happened, but I have to tell him this weekend. I don't want him to find out from anyone other than my husband and me.  I don't want him to find out at all really, but that is not possible.  How could someone kill defenseless 6 year old babies?

Every day I unlock my teachers door. Every day I have to make sure that it locks from the outside without fiddling with it. In case of emergency we have to just close the door. Would we be safe? I don't know.   My room would be the second room visited. I hope that we would be fast enough to get the door closed and go on lockdown.   I hope we never have to find out if we are fast enough.  We have no where to hide in that room, no good way to escape.  I do know that every single one of those teachers (and the supporting staff) in my school would do anything and everything in their power to make sure those kids are safe.

I am so glad that today is Saturday. I wouldn't be able to send my son to school today. I might not be able to on Monday, except  that I know there will be 26 8 yr olds who want to know that they are safe.  They'll have questions. I'll have questions. I don't know if there are any answers yet.

The next time someone tells me about the right to bear arms and that guns don't kill people, people kill people I will go off on them. People do kill people, but with a gun they get to do it faster  and it's harder to fight back.  I am NOT anti gun. But I am in favor of gun laws. Restrictive gun laws. Mandatory gun training. Limits on the number of people killers that anyone can own.  Background checks that actually check.

 I don't want to talk about this anymore.


I'm going to go hug my kid.