It’s time to heed red flag warning on school violence

What happened? How did we travel from a time of school paper drives, kick ball and May Fetes to a time of school metal detectors, armed teachers and live shooter drills? How did we go from ABCs to AK-47s? Before examining that question, can we acknowledge together the wearying nature of our national “conversation” about guns in America? The Wild West’s famous Gunfight at the OK Corral only lasted 30 seconds, but our fight over gun ownership, violence and security goes on and on, like a Civil War-era Henry Repeater Rifle.

It’s telling that the legendary gun battle in Tombstone, Ariz., did not take place at a dusty, Western-theme-sounding corral. It took place beside C.S. Fly’s Photographic Studio. Not even Hollywood could sell a movie called, “The Gunfight at C.S. Fly’s Photographic Studio.”

If only they had tried. Maybe guns would not hold such a place of privilege in the contemporary American character. Oh, to fight over Fly’s photographs instead! “You’ll get my new digital, mirror-less camera when you pry my dead finger off the video-record button.”

Alas, it is not to be. Instead, we’ve taken up our positions on guns in echo chambers on opposite sides of town. In fact, we’ve begun to doubt that we live in the same town. In the extremities of our self-focus, the views of one side look alien to the other side. We don’t walk the same streets, so there’s no possible intersection of interests.

After the May 18 mass shooting at Santa Fe High School south of Houston, there was talk of adopting a so-called “red flag” law that would theoretically keep guns out of the hands of people who clearly posed a threat to themselves or others. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

But to folks who wear their guns in their souls, it’s an outrage. That is not meant pejoratively; it’s meant to acknowledge that for many, guns form such an integral part of their lives that talk of restrictions is an attack on their sense of self.

Mock that if you want, but remember you, too, wrap your sense of con- ventional selfhood in ideas others might find strange. We should ask ourselves how we could expect to make our communities and schools safer with assaults on our neighbors’ selfhood.

And, those of you who do wear your love of guns close to your hearts, you should see that others don’t. And never will.

Instead, they see children’s lives stilled by bullets. Behind their tears, they imagine those children still dancing their May Fete dances in the neighborhood schoolyard down the street but for the guns and bullets a deranged shooter should never have had access to. Is that really so hard to understand? In any case, there will be no “red flag” law in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and others in leadership have made sure of that.

Perhaps if we took the issue out of the passive voice: “Today, the Texas Legislature voted to give guns to those who pose an immediate violent threat to themselves and others.” Would that make a difference?

Before retreating to our echo chambers, can we spend a moment trying to understand why we, collectively, have grown so accustomed to violence that we would replace our schools’ springtime maypoles and their celebrations of glorious new life with rooftop guard turrets and bullet-proof doors?

There is one certainty: It did not happen in the passive voice. We did things that made it happen. We, together, are the subjects in the sentence, “We replaced the school carnival with school carnage.”

No one else did it. We did it. It did not fall upon us from the sky. It did not grow unbeckoned from our gardens. We brought it upon ourselves.

While we did so, though, a spirit was at work. We can see its signal if we look. There, on a pole higher than any maypole ever was, a red flag flies over America. Some hopeful, unyielding part of the American spirit raised the flag in warning. We should heed our red flag message to — and about — ourselves.