What kind of a country do we live in?
On Sept. 10, I was in Evergreen, Colorado, babysitting for our 12-year-old granddaughter, Liesl, while her parents were on vacation. Shortly after noon, I received a text that her school was in lockdown, that there had been a deadly shooting at the local high school campus. Three students had been shot, one of whom was the 16-year-old perpetrator. When I picked up a scared and confused Liesl that afternoon, all she could say was, “How did this happen to us?” Although Liesl and her classmates still grieve for their small town’s devastating loss, people here barely know about this latest gunfire atrocity. In our country the latest school shooting victims have been all but forgotten.
On Sept. 10, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on the campus of Utah Valley University. Flags have been lowered to half staff, politicians across the country speak of the senselessness of Kirk’s death, moments of silence have been observed in Congress and sporting events, and there is a move afoot to erect a statue in his memory on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol.
What kind of a country do we live in, where the value of one murder victim outweighs the worth of another? Where the memory of innocent school children fades into oblivion while the death of a political activist continues to “stun” the nation? Why does our country simply accept the killing fields of our schools as “business as usual” while memorializing other murders as tragedies never to be forgotten? In what other country are children’s lives so inconsequential? Is this the kind of country I want to live in?