You never think it's going to happen to you
I shared a few days ago on one of the threads in this forum that I went to school in Broward County, Florida and in 2008, while I was in high school, there was a shooting that occurred. A student, a girl, brought a handgun to school and shot another student. The girl who was shot died at the hospital. The girl who was shot, I had just met her a few weeks earlier through a mutual friend. When I met her, she gave the greatest energy and the greatest vibes. She was someone that you'd gravitate to. She was just so full of positive energy. The shooting had gathered a lot of media attention with news crews sitting outside the school and news helicopters hovering above the school. It was a lot to deal with.
When the shooting occurred, myself and some friends (and about 1/3 of the school) was at lunch in the cafeteria. The principal announced over the intercom that the school was in lock down. You can hear the seriousness in her voice as she said in a loud and panicked tone "THE SCHOOL IS IN LOCK DOWN! LOCK DOWN NOW! LOCK! DOWN!" We had no idea why we were in lock down. We had no idea a shooting occurred. The only thing that I knew was that my lunchtime got extended and that means less class time. Eventually, the lock down ends and we are allowed to leave the cafeteria and we can see straight across to a separate classroom building, the yellow tape marking the scene where the incident occurred and the victim's backpack lying on the ground. All of the students were herded and bottle-necked into one pathway to the other side of the school to our classrooms to avoid students going near the scene. Through word of mouth, we all eventually learn what happened and the name of the victim. The next puzzle was that the victim had the same name as two other girls, both of which I knew and were good friends with. Our heads were spinning trying to figure which girl was it. Eventually, everyone figures out which girl it was and everyone is devastated.
I remember the word about the shooting had spread fast. I remember parents waiting outside of the school gates, trying to call into the school, and parents calling their kids' cellphones. I remember reading the baseless comments online and speculation from people who knew nothing about what happened pretending they knew what happened and why it happened.
To this day, I still think about it from time to time. I still think about the grief. I still think about the overwhelming press coverage, and the sound of the helicopters hovering over the school. I still think about how the cruel things that people did and speculated about online. I still think about the loss.
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More recently, I lost a cousin to gun violence. I have a rather large extended family. As a family, we've had our fair share of funerals and grieving but this time was different. We had never lost a family member to gun violence. Last year in June, my mother was getting ready for a month-long trip to Georgia to be with the family. She had made the decision to leave a day earlier than originally planned because my cousin (my mother's nephew) had planned a 4th of July trip with his mother and all of his aunts (which includes my mom), his children and a few other cousins. My mom and one of my aunts were going to drive up on June 30th, however on June 27th, my mother gets an unannounced visit from a niece with unfortunate news. I walk into the room and I noticed tears rolling down their faces and I ask "what's wrong? Why are you crying?" and when I get the news that my cousin had gone missing and they heard that he had been shot and killed. I was stunned. It was so hard to believe.
For the time being, this had just been unproven because no one knew where he was. He had not come home from work as he normally would have. They had found out that he had traveled over to the next state on the day he went missing and his adult children went looking for him. When they arrive at the location they believe my cousin went to, someone there tells them that they had seen my cousin and that he'd been shot. However, nobody has any idea where he or his car is.
We went up to Georgia the next day to help look for him. We offered a reward to the public for any information. We did all we could to find him. One week went by, and nothing. Two weeks went by and nothing. About two and a half weeks in, one of cousins get a call from the police saying they found his car with him inside. It took a special kind of evil to mutilate him the way they did. I won't go into the the gruesome details but they didn't only shoot him. It was brutal what they did to him.
My cousin was a tough son-of-a-gun, no pun intended. Of any family member, he was the one nobody expected this to happen to because he had this unbeatable and invincible spirit about him. We were shocked that someone would get the drop on him OF ALL PEOPLE because it was thought to be damn-near unimaginable. My cousin was a gun owner himself, but not a "gun humper" or a "collector," and he always had it nearby just in case. He would take his children to the gun range and teach them how to handle guns properly. When he was younger, he had served in the military. After that, he had gotten into some trouble. He had gone to prison but he had gotten out and really turned his life around. He had gotten a great job, been promoted, and recently bought some land and built a nice house for his family with a garden in the backyard over the past few years.
It was the first time our family had gone through something like that. It was horrific and terrifying. To immediately go from planning a fun family trip to planning an unexpected funeral is heart wrenching. It was a closed-casket ceremony and the most painful part of it was that we did not get to see him one last time before we buried him. Those monsters robbed us of that.
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I write all of this to say that I never imagined that a shooting would happen at any school I attended, but it did. I never thought that I would lose a family member in such a sudden and horrific way but I did. Evil comes at the times when you least expect. For all the "gun humpers" and wannabe superheros that believe they'd be able to stop someone, if the moment arises, they will never be prepared for it. It happens so suddenly, in the most unpredictable way and most unpredictable place, that you may not even have the time to respond. The mythical gun-toting heroes always seem to never be where they're needed the most or if they happen to be there, they almost certainly die before they can react.
When you're prepared, it always comes from the place where you're not looking.
You never know how these things play out.
You never know where it will come from.
You never think it's going to happen to you.
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