Frightening lessons on gun violence

Didi told me he’d curled up like a turtle.

Tears sprang into my eyes. I’d asked him about the secure campus drill, in which they practiced what to do in the event of a school shooting. My thoughts flashed to the first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary, how tiny and terrified the students must have been in the moments before they perished.

“We hid in the playhouse,” Didi added.

Located in the corner of the kindergarten classroom, the playhouse seemed insubstantial, meager protection against a hail of bullets. “If ...” I said. My husband shot me a look. We didn’t want to scare the twins, to introduce the idea that they could come under attack at the school, yet I also wanted them to understand the importance of the drill.

“If there’s an emergency, you have to listen to the teacher. Do whatever she says,” I said. The twins nodded. “When?” I asked. “If the speakers go off,” Didi said.

“Why — when?” I asked.

“If there’s a dangerous animal on campus,” he said. So that was how their teacher had explained it to them, in an age-appropriate manner. I doubted that the wild turkeys or deer that proliferate here were much of a threat, even if Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos would have us believe that we need guns in schools to ward off grizzly bears.

In his weekly newsletter, the principal detailed what else happened. After announcing the drill over the loudspeakers, he prompted teachers to check for stray students, staff members and parent volunteers. Teachers locked doors, closed blinds, took roll and made a report to the front office. They didn’t create barricades or ask students to hide under desks to avoid undue anxiety, he said.

From installing metal detectors to holding drills, schools across the country are preparing for what once seemed unimaginable. Parents are also navigating this new reality. Sooner rather than later, as the twins gain a greater understanding of the world, my husband and I will have to teach them about school shootings — 226 since 2013, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit group founded in the wake of Sandy Hook. America’s gun homicide rate is more than 25 times the average of other developed countries. Every day, guns kill more than 90 Americans and injure hundreds more — of those, seven are children or teenagers.

The death of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton — shot in the back in Chicago while standing with friends in a park in 2013 — spawned the Wear Orange campaign, every June 2 on National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Orange because it’s the color that hunters use in the woods to protect themselves, say organizers, who are urging people to march, write politicians, and take to social media to stop gun violence.

And yet, gun sales spike every time there’s a mass shooting. And yet, the powerful gun lobby continues to push for looser gun laws, President Trump pledged to end the “eight-year assault” on the Second Amendment, and Congress recently killed a rule that tightened gun access. Guns are everywhere: in the water guns that the twins fire off at the pool, in arcade games, in movies and television shows, so many guns that we stop noticing until the latest tragedy shakes us.

The day after the drill, as our family walked to the school’s spring festival, I noticed a small square of frosted glass on their classroom. Picturing a shooter poking his gun into the window, I went shaky. Even thinking about it felt like a jinx. A friend lost her 23-year-old son to gun violence, and at his memorial service, a photo of her son — when he was about the same age as the twins — had gutted me.

The twins ran ahead, excited for the pony rides and games on the schoolyard. If the Sandy Hook victims had lived, they would have been finishing the sixth grade and looking forward to summer.

When I was a kid, we practiced earthquake drills — “duck and cover!” During the Cold War, students also had to “duck and cover,” in case of a nuclear bomb. Remember the mascot? Bert the turtle, hunching down just as Didi learned how. Remember the jingle? “Every turtle is very alert/ When danger threatens they never get hurt/ They know just want do/ The duck and cover, duck and cover.”

Such precautions seem as flimsy as a playhouse would be in a school shooting, and yet they are necessary all the same. They foster conversations in the classroom and at home, conversations parents will have with their children on June 2 and beyond.

Every day, guns kill more than 90 Americans and injure hundreds more — of those, seven are children or teenagers.