What Now?

What now?

It's only February, and we are already several school shootings deep into this new year.

On a Sunday morning show, the host began one lead-in with the unfathomable words, "This week's school shooting..."

One of my college roommates, a high school teacher for over 30 years, posted this:

"I started this career nearly 30 years ago and my biggest worry was a kid being out at the bathroom too long. Now we have an officer on campus. I have a magnetic screen to put over my door’s window to prevent an intruder from seeing us hiding in my room. I have a fucking five gallon red hazmat bucket and a tarp in case we are locked down for hours and kids need to use the bathroom. Those are the “school supplies” our district provides us with. We practice locking down."

Just absorb that. She has a bucket in her room for her students to use as a toilet in case an active shooter situation goes on for hours.

I'm not casting blame anywhere. I'm casting blame everywhere.

Congress, you have failed to act after school shootings. You have enacted meaningful legislation in the past. You were moved to pass the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act after Reagan and James Brady were shot. You passed the Gun Control Act in 1968 after JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr. and RFK were shot. In 1986, as gang violence grew, you passed the Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act, which outlawed armor-piercing bullets. You seem to find your voice and power when government officials and peace officers are taken down.  Why not when innocent kids are shot dead?

NRA, I don't even have the words. Your refusal to back even the most basic, common-sense reforms makes you complicit in this descent into madness.

FBI, you missed several chances to perhaps apprehend this troubled teen before he committed this madness. His name was literally given to you along with the information that he wanted to become a school shooter (self-proclaimed). That's a giant breakdown worthy of analysis.

Gun owners, your insistence that you need automatic weapons for "hunting" would be laughable if it didn't have such tragic consequences. Automatic weapons are made for killing. They were LITERALLY invented to kill humans.

Americans over the age of 18, our vote is our voice. As a nation we have had a collective case of laryngitis for years. We have hovered between a low of 54.2 percent of eligible voters casting ballots in the 2000 election to a high of 62.3 percent in 2008.  In this last election, only 58 percent of those eligible actually voted. I am embarrassed for us as a country.

I am not a member of Congress, nor do I belong to the NRA. I am not in the FBI. I do not, nor have I ever, owned a gun. Of any kind. I vote in every election. But I'm not excluding myself from blame.

Because at this point, clearly, just casting my ballot is not enough. And yet I haven't done anything more than that. Sure, I've posted my sadness, anger and disgust on Facebook. But really, what good does that do? I can't speak for anyone else, but by and large anyone reading my Facebook posts feels the same way I do. I keep hearing the phrase "echo chamber" regarding our social media followings, and I get it. We're preaching to the choir.

So what now? I've found myself wondering that the last 48 hours. What can I do? What can we do?

I'm encouraged by the students of Parkland who, just days after their friends and teachers were gunned down, even though many of them are too young to vote, are finding ways for their voices to be heard. They are helping to organize a "March for Our Lives" on March 24 in Washington DC. They are also participating in a national school walkout on March 14. According to the NBC news website, "The goal is for everyone to walk out of their classrooms for 17 minutes at 10 a.m. to protest Congress' inaction to do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to gun violence plaguing our schools and neighborhoods."

I'm going to take my cue from these brave students, one of whom, on the national news tonight, declared that they will be the ones to get something to happen because they have "grown up with school shootings" and they don't want their kids to have to endure the same future. They have grown up with school shootings. That's just a horrendous sentence to write. And acknowledge.

The first thing I'm going to do is look up which members of congress accept NRA donations. And then I am going to donate to campaigns of people running against them. I'm going to continue to vote in every election. And I think I will go to the Sacramento branch of the March for Our Lives on March 24.

I'm only one voice.

Voices that don't speak up can't be heard.

Voices that all speak up together change the world.