Uncomfortably Close to Home

"We are going to be the last mass school shooting." So said students in Parkland, Florida, a couple weeks ago. Of course, nobody -- likely not even the students who said that -- believed it to be literal truth. All it would take is for one person, somewhere, to go off.

Yesterday morning, we had the 4th shooting on a college campus since Parkland. The first 3 didn't include any deaths, but 2 people died yesterday. According to news reports, a student killed his own parents, who were on campus to pick him up and take him home for spring break.

In the current news cycle, an event like this seems sadly unremarkable. It can be dismissed as a "domestic dispute." No students were killed in the making of this story. Move along.

But this one was at Central Michigan University, where Aaron is studying. Yesterday morning, he was preparing to come home for spring break. He had an 11am class, after which he was going over to the music building to practice. He was going to take his bow, which needs to be re-haired, get his music, and come on home.

By 10am, the messages were flying: Central Michigan on lockdown. Mt. Pleasant, too. Classes canceled.

We knew from the start that Aaron was safe, that was never an issue. He lives off campus, nowhere near the site of the shooting, and even the initial reports suggested that the shooter fled on foot in the opposite direction from where Aaron lives. The impact? The rehairing of the bow will have to wait, and may need to be done by mail-order. The music is at school. We fielded a few messages from concerned friends, and by late afternoon Aaron was home.

In my prior post, I wrote, "Today, we have one child in college, and one in high school. What would protect them?" It was a rhetorical question. In the incident that occurred yesterday morning, Aaron didn't especially need protection: he was a couple miles away, and was never in any danger. Were an incident to occur closer to his location...

I have been encouraged by the willingness of Parkland victims to speak out and to lead. They have spoken eloquently, and have shown no sign of backing down to the NRA or anyone else. As Tim Kreider wrote in a New York Times op-ed yesterday, "whenever you disapprove of young people, you’re in the wrong, because you’re going to die and they’ll get to write history."

That may be a tad too simplistic. But I'd like to see them make a bit of history. Enough, at least, so that we have no more mass school shootings. Then, perhaps, no more mass shootings in this country.