Children with guns and dodging Bullets- A new American Sadness

 Readers, followers, I have tried and I have waited to write, to blog about something upbeat, positive and new.  The unfortunate fact remains that as sure as the sun will rise in the east and set in the west the news every day brings more reports- just locally, of gun violence.  Lives threatened, ruined, mamed and lives ended.  Lives barely lived, ended by senseless and needless gun violence.  Shootings by actual children that have not even reached their teens.  This isn't just a Philadelphia phenomenon but it is the metropolitan area where I live so it is a constant theme.  Everyday...and it has become the new American Sadness.

The first thing that jumps out is; where are all the guns coming from that these kids are getting?  I've written about the teenagers, the older teens, but now it is 11 and 12 year olds.  No school yard tussles.  Kids argue and then later someone gets shot.   Sometimes you would worry about "getting jumped," a term for a rival's friends jumping out and giving a beat down. Today that doesn't happen.  My old neighborhood had three teens jump out of a car with altered weapons to make them automatic, and spray dozens of bullets- maiming nine other teens from their school. Not all were intended targets.  The alleged reason?  Retaliation for yet another teen shooting that killed a high schooler two neighborhoods over from my suburban street.

All of this has almost made us numb to the fact that these are lives that are being ended. Just yesterday, at a carnival, two groups disagreed and instead of fight each other, it became another catastrophic shooting.  Just last week I had to drive through one of my old Philly neighborhoods.  The one where the nine teens were shot back in March that I mentioned above. I was never in fear there before.  People drive like idiots and if you hit the horn they will now shoot you.  There were two of these instances in the last three days.  A child sitting in a car seat got hit and killed.  A three year old child.  Horrible, terrible, sad.

Last week was the week of both my older daughter's birthday and her older daughter's birthday.  I have been getting the same chocolate layer cake from the same neighborhood diner's bakery for as long as I can remember.  This is the only thing my daughter ever asks for her birthday.  My older granddaughter too.  The diner is adjacent to the high school in Philly that all the students, shooters and victims attended.  In order to avoid "areas of potential conflict" I took the most indirect route both to and from the diner.  

I've been going there for so long I can't remember it not existing.  It opened in its current location when I was only two years old.  This diner was a significant "safe-place" to me.  A place where I went with my parents and grandparents.  A place where I took some of my dates when I was a teen, living way out in the suburbs but would regularly visit my maternal grandparents a couple neighborhoods over.  I passed that down to my daughters and my own granddaughter.  We went for birthdays, holidays, many significant life events.  Five generations of us!

Last week I made sure that when I was picking up the cake that it was well past the time that the high school had let out for the day.  I feared getting caught in senseless cross-fire.  This year was the first time that I waited nervously as the owner was looking for the right sized box for the cake.  I left quickly and as soon as traffic started to slow I veered off onto a side street not wanting any confrontation.  Just one block from the school I attended for kindergarten someone in a muscle car decided to pass everyone in opposite lane, heading straight toward oncoming traffic.  Luckily he turned into a parking lot without incident.  I had visions of a shooting happening as the white charger roared past.

The Answerman says "We have to do better as a society, lock up the guns, close the loopholes to getting access by the wrong people.  We have to teach responsibility, that earning one's way in life is how to gain financial success, not robbing people.  We used to play dodgeball at recess.  Now recess gets canceled in a lockdown and children are dodging bullets.  Every child should have a chance to have wonderful childhood memories...not be one."