Safe and Sound

Abstract

Safe and Sound Annie Bartos (bio) Safe, adj. (1): secure, unharmed; still alive or existing; immune from punishment. Our house is no more than three miles from the shooting range. My daughter's outdoor preschool is closer, less than one mile as the bullet flies. "What's that sound?" my almost-five-year-old daughter asked me. "I think those are gun shots," I said. "Are they going to kill us?" she asked. "No, honey. You are safe." The words fell out of my mouth, meant to convince myself as much as her that a shooting range is not dangerous. That shooting ranges are essentially schools to teach gun safety, for people to practice a skill. That the sound of bullets is nothing to be alarmed about. The website for the range states firearms that can be used there include: all handguns and rifles; any shotguns and loads; pistols, pistol-caliber carbines up to .45 ACP; rifles using rim-fire cartridges; shotguns with 7.5 shot or smaller; rifles with ammunition up to and including 50 caliber BMG; black powder firearms; handguns using rifle-caliber ammo. None of these guns should be able to reach farther than 400 yards, about a third of a mile. Therefore, the bullets fired at the shooting range should not reach the site of her preschool. The website also advises: Read range rules upon arriving. If only rules kept people safe. Rules, in their expression as laws, are simply meant to regulate, to keep order. Safety is not the primary goal, but rather a possibility. Statistics confirm this impossibility. Unintentional shootings, accidents from improperly stored firearms, and suicide by gunshot are the leading cause of death for people under the age of twenty-four. The data show the numbers continuing to rise, rather than plateau. And schools are hardly safe havens. On April 20, 1999, I was in my last year of college in Boulder, less than forty miles from Columbine High School. It was the early days of the internet, a year after Google launched, and a year before Wikipedia. I returned to my flat for lunch after my morning classes, and the house, partitioned into five separate flats, was quiet except for the sound of voices on a television. My housemate's door was wide open, and he called out my name when I came through the flower garden gate. The screen on his T.V. showed a line of kids running in single file, crouching their heads, herding together outside the school. Aerial views of a sprawling high school building; a parking lot; police cars; the flat, tree-less landscape surrounding the school. Groups of kids hugging, crying, huddling behind police vehicles. It was hard to know what was happening, but it seemed impossible. The words "never again" were declared. In the twenty-plus years that have passed since that April day, hundreds of thousands of kids in schools across the country have been exposed to gun-related violence during school hours. Not all these events have been televised or captured on social media. Most aren't even reported in the news. Every so [End Page 141] often, a particularly horrific shooting will breach the headlines, and the dead may be named. Year after year, "thoughts and prayers" have had minimal impact on federal gun legislation. When she graduated from preschool, public kindergarten inched my daughter a half mile further from the shooting range. But the sound of bullets is still heavy on the recess yard, mingling with the sound of the school bell, the P.E. teacher's whistle, and the screeching strings of student violin lessons. The gun range's very presence within earshot of a place of learning is a material and visceral reminder that shootings happen every day. For the next five years of elementary school, my daughter and her classmates will learn the drills for a fire, an earthquake, and how to "shelter in place." Their teachers will be trained in active shooter drills. They will instruct the children to run, hide, defend, or offend. Some of these kids will become friends while others might be bullied, envied, excluded. Some of these kids will have guns in...