{"id":8715479,"date":"2023-01-13T04:30:31","date_gmt":"2023-01-13T12:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eastbaytimes.com\/?p=8715479&preview=true&preview_id=8715479"},"modified":"2023-01-13T04:42:24","modified_gmt":"2023-01-13T12:42:24","slug":"opinion-the-red-flag-flying-across-america-that-we-never-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eastbaytimes.com\/2023\/01\/13\/opinion-the-red-flag-flying-across-america-that-we-never-see\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: The red flag flying across America that we never see"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the right time of day, you can hear an elementary school before you can see it, and if the air is still and the natural acoustics favorable, the discordant symphony of America\u2019s youngest students at recess is an auditory blessing.<\/p>\n

The beautiful racket that boils from an attack on playground equipment or a race around it or any of the thousand other impulses bursting from dynamo bodies and newly freed minds has a clamorous harmony like nothing else.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one school I walk past almost every day, through the park across the street, then back across the full span of its architectural footprint. With or without the soundtrack, I look for only one thing \u2014 someone who looks out of place, or who is carrying something that looks out of place, but more bluntly, someone with a gun.<\/p>\n

Since about Columbine (1999).<\/p>\n

There is no school at Richneck Elementary in Newport News, Virginia, this week because last week ended with a first grade teacher getting shot in her classroom by a 6-year-old.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis,\u201d said Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones, \u201cis a red flag for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Respectfully, Mayor, you new to this country?<\/p>\n

This country did not lose its gun-loving mind last Friday. It took decades upon decades of ill-conceived arguments, millions upon millions of gun lobby dollars, and generations upon generations of gutless politicians to make this a country with more guns than people, a country with less than 5% of the world\u2019s population holding 40% of its civilian-owned weaponry.<\/p>\n

If the red flag is the signal to question how a 6-year-old got a gun in the United States of America, the better question is probably, \u201cHow did he avoid it for the first five years of his life?\u201d<\/p>\n

Only by the favorable exactitudes of trajectory and ballistics was first grade teacher Abby Zwerner not murdered in her classroom by a 6-year-old extracting a gun from his backpack \u2014 and maybe that\u2019s why this particular news story got such poor traction in a media culture consumed by Prince Harry, Kevin McCarthy and the all-important re-jiggering of the NFL playoff format. Nobody died at Richneck Elementary. It was the first school shooting of the year. If trends continue, we\u2019ll get 50 or 60 more.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a red flag still flappable in all of this, it might be the psychological compromise we demand from America\u2019s children to appease the craven political culture that contorts itself to the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n

Ninety-five percent of public schools in America have some kind of active shooter drills.\u00a0The most sickening quote I\u2019ve ever seen was something an elementary school kid told his parents about active shooter drills; he hates them because \u201cthe good hiding places are always taken first. There\u2019s nothing to hide behind. He\u2019ll be able to see me.\u201d<\/p>\n

In America, in 2022, gun violence surpassed car crashes as the No. 1 killer of young people. Schools, our supposed safe space, have been the stage for nearly 150 shootings since 2018.<\/p>\n

A law professor who runs the Children\u2019s Defense Clinic at the University of Richmond weighed in Tuesday on the matter of what to do with the 6-year-old shooter. \u201cObviously this is a tragedy on every level,\u201d she said. \u201cAs a 6-year-old, he just doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to even understand how to form the intent to commit a crime like this.”<\/p>\n

No, he doesn\u2019t. But a gun \u2014 yeah, that he\u2019s got.<\/p>\n

One day the sound an elementary school makes before you see it will be different, no longer pulsating with its total color and richness, not exactly full with its accustomed joy. There will be no mystery as to why.<\/p>\n

Gene Collier is a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist. \u00a92023 PG Publishing Co. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.<\/em><\/p>\n