tired

Oh man I hate being sick.

This Monday was just malicious.  Nothing awful happened in my day (I admit I'm cashing in on my privilege when I write these blog posts about my personal life that don't have anything to do with the national news, but Jesus Christ, I can only take so much of wrestling with the obvious descent of our democracy into an irredeemable dystopian hell), but it dragged.  All I could do was feel horribly sad and angry about yet another mass shooting committed by a seemingly law-abiding white man while all the good patriots proclaim his god-given right to carry an assault weapon that can snuff out or directly harmfully impact 550+ human lives so that nothing will ever change, while wishing I could kick the day in the ass to get it to move a little faster.

When shit like this happens (WHY THE FUCK IS IT THE REALITY THAT I CAN SAY "WHEN" SHIT LIKE THIS HAPPENS), I keep flashing back to one of the memorable moments in my short-lived teaching career.

I taught eleventh-grade English in one of the worst high schools in Detroit for six months.  A majority of my students had criminal records and parole officers.  Multiple fights broke out daily all over the school, necessitating a full-time security team.  The year before I joined the staff a teacher had been fired for breaking up a fight with a broom; she later won her suit against the district because it was ruled that she had no other options to keep the rest of her students safe.  One of the classrooms still bore bloodstains on the walls from when the police beat the shit out of a kid.  Every day I interacted with students whom the entire social infrastructure has failed since their grandparents' conception.  A few of them maintained hope -- hope that they could succeed, hope that they could get out, hope that they could earn safe and prosperous lives for themselves.  A number of them wanted to succeed but had no idea how and couldn't connect good grades with hard work.  An equal number of them didn't see the point of playing along to a system that had already set them up to fail.  A few were openly hostile.  Every fucking day, they broke my goddamn heart.

And I couldn't help them.  The memorable moments were mostly the things that they taught me (as if a white woman's lessons were more important than the ones I tried to plan for them).  Like the unit I did on mass shootings after yet another shooting while an actual leader still ran our country.

I opened up the unit with a poll.  I had them write down, individually, whether they thought that guns should be made illegal.

I don't know what I expected.  Most of these kids possessed firearms aplenty; a number of them had used them in the acts that earned them their criminal records.

And out of all of my 100 students, 98 of them said that no one should be allowed to own a gun.  Ever.  And the two that argued in favor of guns argued that people need to protect their families.

These are kids that don't walk outside to their cars at night because of the violence in their neighborhoods.  Kids you might expect to think that guns were a necessity of life.

And they hate guns.  All of them.  Even the ones that use them.  They fucking hate guns.

And when poor black kids from the 'hood in goddamn Detroit can agree on something like this -- goddammit, America.  Fucking listen.  I stood there listening to their opinions and their stories and their passionate arguments against the legality of gun ownership, and it was one of those moments that took my upbringing in white supremacy and rewrote my entire understanding of reality.

We need to do better by our country.  We need to do better by our kids.  Maybe mass shootings are difficult to prevent, but a lot of gun violence isn't.

I used to be an emphatic supporter of "the Second Amendment."  I still don't have a problem with individuals owning a handgun or a shotgun or a hunting rifle -- in theory.  But I would give up my right to own a gun tomorrow if it meant that we could stop seeing these horrifying stories of toddlers shooting each other and women getting murdered by their partners and exes (I just realized yesterday that in the last few months I have astronomically reduced the odds that I'll be raped, assaulted and/or murdered.  By being single.  Let that sink in for a minute.  Seriously, just let that sink in. Because statistically it's the simple truth) and kids killing each other in the inner cities.  Or possibly angry white dudes deciding to murder a huge number of people just because they're angry.

I love marksmanship.  I enjoy target and skeet shooting.  I'm not half-bad at it.  But I no longer think my interest in a particular skill set outweighs other people's right to life and safety.

I have the luxury of feeling tired when I read one more news story about a mass shooting.  Other people will never have the luxury of feeling tired again.  And the people that conflate a right to self-defense with a right to own a full military arsenal need to pull their heads out of their asses and find wherever they stashed their sense of empathy and social responsibility.

This shit needs to stop.