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Last week, I took my three girls to our neighborhood movie theater to see "The Super Mario Bros. Movie." Years ago, every community had one of those discount theaters, but now they've become scarce.
We love to go during the day, midweek, if they don't have school, because you can get unlimited popcorn for just $4. It's a steal.
As we emerged from the light-hearted film, however, we saw a man in the hallway. He wore a black security shirt and he had a gun in a holster on his waist.
His presence and firearm seemed, sadly, normal and appropriate. I worry that we've just accepted this. I worry that the next generation – my daughters' generation – will have to undo the crisis we've allowed to fester: the normalization of mass shootings.
They are the only thing that seems to unite us: not the politicized conversation about the gun regulations that would curb those shootings – as if there are two sides to this – but our collective vulnerability.
It does not matter who you are. Maybe you're rich or poor. Maybe you're respected in your community. Maybe you feel alone and overlooked. Maybe you're young. Maybe you're old. Maybe you're in Minneapolis. Maybe you're in Cottage Grove. Maybe you're at the airport. Or church. Or work. Or school. Or … The venue is irrelevant now. These bullets do not discriminate.
Congratulations. We've done it. We are together now. It could happen anywhere at any time to anyone.
While I understand the disruptive forces that have complicated the attempt to end mass shootings in this country, I also do not believe that resistance is any different than the hurdles within other pivotal moments in American history. Every push that has led to safety and additional freedoms encountered seemingly immovable obstacles.
Where would BIPOC communities be right now if civil rights activists, advocates and allies in the past 100 years had decided that their demands were not attainable. What about women? Or the LGBTQ community?
Through those historic disruptions to the status quo, there was a constant refrain: We will not stop until this is fixed.
I do not hear the same retort about mass shootings. Only acceptance, one steeped in frustration and helplessness. I get it. I am not here to say I have the answers. But I also don't think it's fair to ask our children to address the consequences of our inaction.
Sure, I am standing on my soapbox while preaching to the choir as I attempt to tell it like it is. Those clichés mimic our repeated responses to the familiar devastation. Our pain is both real and rehearsed.
Those who live with the pain of that violence watch the headlines about the tragedies disappear in 24 hours.
"It's a nightmare that I don't wish on any parent – to go in and to see my baby lying there in a pile of blood," said LaTonya Allen, the mother of one victim of a mass shooting at a Sweet 16 party in Alabama. "That was the worst thing that I could experience in my life."
Earlier that week, I'd reached out to a friend of mine who lives in Louisville near the scene of a mass shooting at a downtown bank.
"Hey man? You good?" I said.
"Yeah. I'm not at the house right now," he said.
Relief. For now.
"This is awful," Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said at the news conference in the immediate aftermath of that Louisville shooting. "I have a very close friend that didn't make it today, and I have another close friend that didn't either and one who's at the hospital that I hope is going to make it through."
There are things I don't tell my children related to my fears attached to their safety in this climate.
They hate that I sit in the aisle seats about halfway up the stairs in the theater. Every time. For me, it's the angle. I can see most of the room and any character who might decide to unleash destruction.
I'm not Batman. I can't stop these events singlehandedly. I know that.
But I'm comforted by the perception of security. I'm always looking around the theater, missing key scenes from the movies, wondering if that man who is just going back to get more popcorn for his family will do something terrible. And he probably thinks the same thing about me.
It's fair to say we all don't know what to do, especially with power-brokers throughout this country who refuse to use their influence to stop these mass shootings. But I also do not think that's sufficient.
This week, I received an email from my youngest daughter's school. A meeting had been scheduled to offer guidance on school shootings and her school's active shooter response plan.
My daughter is in kindergarten.
But she is doing those safety drills that didn't exist 20 years ago. She does not fully understand them but she understands the concept of searching for safety and security in the middle of potential chaos.
She knows her movie theater has a man with a gun who roams the hallways to keep people safe.
She does not know, however, that so many of us have decided that we can't identify a solution to change this.
