A Shot in the Dark

What looks to be a perfectly serene schoolhouse can become hell in an instant. One would assume it is because a child is throwing a tantrum, the children are collectively loud, there is no control amongst them. Rarely, it is the adults in the room that are suspected of creating the chaos. Children are our future, but they are also our demise one man thinks to himself. Who is this man they ask? Seeing him before, he is not a school official. Surely, he is someone trusted enough to be on school property. That is until the children realize that this adult is not safe and pulls out a semiautomatic weapon in attempts to kill them all execution-style.

This mass shooting occurred in 2006 and some may wonder about why to address this particular one as there have been so many other mass shootings at schools since. However, unlike the countless other schools mass shootings occur at, this community was mostly defenseless. The Amish are a forgiving and religious group of people. Thoughts and prayers do not bring about reform though. It gives politicians a minute to wipe the sweat from their brows, post this minimal tribute to social media and move along with their lives until the next mass shooting occurs. This is America.

So, the lone survivor that is confined to a wheelchair relives the tragedy day in, day out, while life passes them by. Imagine this young girl wheeling herself into a time portal in well-lit field to go back and stop what had been done. Through the farmed field, the mud and muck, she pushes herself. She arose to the challenge (metaphorically of course) to bring back family and friends. She goes back to the start of the American Revolution to plead with the leaders. They do not hear, or even look at her, because she is just a sickly little girl. She shouts to them that they do not know what is to come from their ability to bear arms. Suddenly, it is her being pushed back through the time portal by a disgruntled and greedy countryman! Winning was all that mattered to them.

At the end of the American Revolution, she reappears only to be grinned at by the same countryman. He is boastful of the firearms that won the war and will still not listen to her pleas. Several states' delegates blindly sign the Constitution without knowing what is to come. They think of the near future and not one that is light years away. There will be societal advancements made in which their minds at the time are unable to comprehend. It is hard for them to imagine their newfound homeland in which they start to kill each other in mass after they have just secured this win. Their future is all that matters to them.

Through the years this little girl has aged to see more of what she has lived through via the news: mass shootings. Deeming the time portal useless, she had also traveled back to when Constitution amendments have been ratified. They had given minorities and women rights. How joyous! Only, it is still your right to be killed in this country by firearms at your own risk said the changers of the laws. It does not matter if it is not you who actually operates the firearm. This is the unspoken detriment caused by the law written of bearing arms. It is as if this inhumanity is etched in stone. To be forever unchanged, uninfringed on for those who see it as a necessity to keep and therefore to witness more and more death. Politicians care about winning, their future and their money. So be it if it is your fate, your right in this country, to die by mass shooting. Defenseless.