Overseas

One morning I was taking my son to daycare. I can’t remember how old he was, but he was still an infant. I noticed that some workers were doing something to the windows of the small building where his room was located. I asked one of his teachers, and she said, “They are putting on a screen that is supposed to slow down bullets.” I tried not to panic and to match her demeanor. She said it to me like it was the most normal thing in the world. “Oh yeah, today is the day our bullet screens get installed.” I don’t remember if I actually said anything to her. I remember going back to my car and sitting in it for a while. My immediate instinct as a dad and human was to get my son, go home, and flee with my family somewhere. I don’t know where, but surely finding a place that didn’t install window screens to slow down bullets on infant classrooms would be a good place to start. 

Now we have two sons. I take them to the same school. They are both in daycare. It is a different building. Today, after I dropped them off, I had the same feeling. How can I leave them? What if today is the day it happens here? After all, it happened at Sandy Hook, and America barely skipped a beat. 

Today is the day after a mass shooting left ten people dead in Boulder, Colorado. Today is one week since a series of shootings near Atlanta left eight people dead. Today is also the day legislators in my state (Tennessee) will vote on moving a bill which allows the permitless carry of handguns to the House floor. Rhetoric around this bill focuses on the notion that more guns equals more safety. Of course, this is nonsense. America has more guns than anywhere else, and this only means more gun violence and death. 

I don’t want to be someone who lives in fear, especially because I think fear is primarily what is driving people to want guns. I want to dismantle fear. At the same time, who am I if something happens to one or both of my children or my wife and I could have done something to prevent it. I don’t mean, “Should I get a gun?” I have guns, and I recognize that having a gun doesn’t make someone a bad person. I didn’t purchase any of the guns I have. They were given to me by family, and some have been in my family for a couple generations. I’ve never used them to hunt because I’m lazy, and I cry when someone is mean to a dog in a movie. So killing a deer is not what I’m going to do unless it’s me or the deer (and even then I will have to ask the deer what I am supposed to do with it once I kill it). I grew up shooting targets, bottles, and skeet. I was a pretty good shot, mainly because Duck Hunt had prepared me for this course in life. I plan to teach my sons about guns. I probably have failed that I haven’t already taught one of them more. And, if they want to hunt or shoot skeet, I’m down. 

But I am not down with teaching them that guns solve problems because they don’t. Violence of any kind is futile and senseless and only leads to more violence. The notion of guns as a means to a safer society is a cheap lie peddled by merchants of death, and I won’t have any part of it. And yes, if America is hellbent on returning to the days of Tombstone and the Wild, Wild West, then you might be doing that without my family. Again, I don’t know what that means, and I don’t want to run and hide. But it feels more and more that America loves guns more than life itself. No advancing society should be spending this much time and money on weapons. To do so invests in death, and I have no interest in raising children in a society fixated on death-dealing. Life is beautiful, and I want them to have the best lives possible. Shouldn’t we want this for every child, and if so, wouldn’t this mean we would melt down guns before we bulletproof windows on daycares?

I usually process difficult feelings and emotions through music. One artist who has helped me tremendously is Jason Isbell. When I first heard his song “Overseas,” I was in awe of the way it captured my thoughts of wanting to leave a place that so tenaciously pursues ugliness, greed, and death. Maybe if he can stay here (and since we live in the same city, I do mean HERE) I can too. But it also somehow helps to know that I’m not the only one who feels this way. And maybe we can get enough people feeling this way strongly enough to do something, before it really is too late.

Here’s the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4kFqy7U6NE