Talking to my Kid About Gun Violence

When the Sandy Hook shooting happened last year, adults were discussing it and the topic of gun violence and gun control a lot, and so it was inevitable that my then-four-year-old daughter would pick some of that information up.

I learned her interest when she told me that she wanted a gun for Christmas so that she could shoot and kill me. Then she laughed, as if this were a funny joke.

What followed was me explaining the concept of death to my kid for the first time. What ultimately hit home for her was the idea that once someone is dead, she would never see them again. They were gone, forever. She started crying at the very thought of it, and as much as it pained me to see her suffer like that, I was glad that she was beginning to understood that real violence can have real horrible consequences.

My thinking is that if a kid is old enough to play-act scenes of violence, to watch cartoons that act out violence (often with no consequences), he or she is old enough to at least have a cursory understanding of what that parallels in reality.

I found myself thinking about this today as we drove home from her school, and she noticed the field of t-shirts on crosses at the Lutheran Seminary, each individual shirt in memorial to a specific victim of illegal gun violence in Philadelphia. My daughter, who has just turned five, asked about the shirts.

In simple terms, I told her the truth: "Those shirts are for people who were killed by guns in our city. So we remember them, and so people stop shooting each other." My voice cracked as I said it. At a stop light, I turned to examine one shirt more closely; its victim's age, 2 years. My daughter's voice peeped up, "Don't feel sad, mama. It'll be okay."

“I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are compromised as a human being. You’re going to trip over that for a good part of your life.” -Maurice Sendak 

Adults so often try to hide these hard realities from kids, but how can we hide what is right there, out in the open for all to see? How can we hide what we are discussing constantly? How can we stop our voices from cracking? Trying to hide the ugliness of the world seems much worse, as kids aren't that stupid, and they will at least know that something is up. Or worse, they'll grow up only associating guns with a bunch of romantic, fictional imagery.

I suppose the retort to that might be something such as, But what if it gives kids nightmares? What if they can't sleep at night for fear that they will be shot by some violent criminal?

So far my daughter hasn't expressed any such fears for her own safety, and she sleeps just fine. I'm the one sometimes kept up by the sound of gunshots in the distance, and haunted by a t-shirt in memorial to a toddler.

Open Carry: Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should

On Saturday the Medina County Gazette of Medina, Ohio published this guest column of mine: 

I frequently visit Medina with my husband and two young children because that’s where I grew up and my parents still live here. The Gazette tells me that next time I'm on the Square with my kids, I might see people from the activist group Northeast Open Carry patrolling the area with firearms in holsters or strapped to their backs. If I do, I won't call the police since there's nothing illegal going on. The law is already firmly on the side of open carry advocates. They aren't even required to show their IDs when questioned by police.

But I won't stick around. Police who carry firearms are trained and hired to serve and protect. Concealed carry requires at least a permit.

But a man just strutting around with a gun, he’s a total unknown. Maybe he's had sufficient training in firearm use and safety, maybe not. Maybe he's a schizophrenic about to have his first onset of serious symptoms. Maybe he's generally paranoid with lousy judgment. Maybe he’s a perfectly stable, responsible guy. The point is, I don't know.

What I do know is that Joe Smith or whoever is holding a deadly weapon and could easily kill me or my kids from hundreds of feet away. 

To Joe Smith or whoever, I didn't ask for your protection, and more importantly, I don't need it. The Medina crime rate is much lower than both the Ohio average and national average crime rates. (The city is ranked among the safest 15 percent of Ohio’s communities, according data compiled by USA.com. Most of the rare robberies and thefts that happen in Medina do not involve a deadly weapon at all. So unless you are on your way to the shooting range or to hunt, why are you flaunting your firearms in public spaces?

Just because you have the legal right to openly carry shotguns, assault rifles, and semi-automatic pistols in public doesn't mean it's a good idea or without risk. The Constitution gives the Westboro Baptist Church the right to protest military funerals with signs saying “God hates fags.” That doesn't mean they should or that doing so won't cause trouble. It also doesn't mean that the public should accept such behavior as “normal.”

People of Medina live without fear. It's not that crime never happens in Medina, but the number of crimes there that could be prevented by a random stranger walking around with a gun are so low that they're negligible. 

In a safe place, adding guns only adds the risks that come with them. That's why most people in Medina clear the area and might even call 911 in response to seeing a random stranger casually patrolling public spaces. Nobody here needs to be “educated.” We already felt safe, and Northeast Open Carry activists are taking some of that peace of mind away. 

Martha Knox is an artist and blogger living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is the daughter of David Knox, the managing editor of The Gazette.

That's my point of view visiting my quiet little hometown in Ohio. Now for my perspective from where I live today. 

A couple years ago a man was shot and killed on my street. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. I heard the shots from my living room, looked out the window just in time to see the shooter and his accomplice run away. Minutes later I stepped out on my porch to see a body lying on the sidewalk across the street. He died on the way to the hospital, one of America's many victims of violent crime, most often connected to the illicit drug trade. 

I live in Philadelphia, a city where hundreds of people are murdered and thousands more are injured with guns every year. Many more, including children and youth, are traumatized by witnessing gun violence in their neighborhoods. Here in Philly, if I saw someone walking around with a gun, even though Pennsylvanians have a right to open carry, I would call 9-11, because here the odds that violence will ensue is likely.

The idea of good guys with guns stopping bad guys with guns is based on nothing more than wishful fantasy, and is in opposition to actual evidence. And yet people all over the United States are trying to change American society into one which encourages vigilantism and is poised for conflict with deadly weapons anywhere, anytime.  

Let's be clear what's happening here: Open Carry Activists already have the right to do what they are doing. What they want now is to change the culture into one which accepts them flaunting those rights. 

Is this a change we Americans want? We already have horrifically high rates of gun violence compared with other industrialized nations. If guns being carried by just about anyone, anywhere, anywhere become the norm, do we really believe that most of those people will be sufficiently trained and cautious at all times? How many people ignore speed limits, thinking they can handle higher speeds, despite the threat of fines and accidents?

Are we really going to ignore the fact that the proliferation of firearms increases the numbers of suicides and accidents involving guns? Or that a desperate criminal will exhibit far more risky behavior such as grabbing a gun from an innocent citizen or shooting innocent people before responsible, armed citizens have a chance to fully assess the situation?

Flaunting rights to openly carry around firearms in public make no sense in safe communities such as my hometown or communities like Philadelphia which are already plagued with gun violence. It makes no sense period. 

The simple truth is that more guns don't protect people. They increase the chance of people getting shot. Forget the wild west fantasy, that's the science, that's the reality.