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“You crouch down, mummy, and balance on the toilet seat, then be as quiet as a mouse.
“That way the shooter might not find you.”
So many things floored me about that conversation, not least that my wee boy used the word “shooter”.
My son – we call him the middle one – was nine at the time, when he came home from his third week at a US elementary school and burst through the door.
He’d made new friends, they’d asked him if he knew David Beckham and why he pronounced “water” weird.
A British Army family, we’d been posted at short notice to Kansas in mid-west USA, from a small Wiltshire village.
There, the primary school had around 100 children, was opposite the church, and doubled as the village hall for fetes, yoga and book club.
Here, the school was on Fort Leavenworth military base. There were 1,000 pupils, fleets of yellow school buses, a morning Pledge of Allegiance and, on the way home, the national anthem piped through loud speakers on street corners. People stopped mowing their lawns to brace up.
Eisenhower Elementary School, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
My kids had grown up in an Army family, they knew about guns, but here it was suddenly in a very different context.
In Kansas, “open carry” without a licence is allowed. And in the rare gun-free zones like the food court on base, people had to be reminded via big signs on the doors – like no-entry signs – that had pictures of handguns in the middle, that they weren’t allowed.
Before we checked in for our first appointment at the doctor’s, the receptionist made sure we had “left all weapons in the car”.
“People are always forgetting,” he smiled apologetically.
Twice a term, the children did ‘lone shooter drills’ at school.
At the movie theatre before the film started, a short animation featuring Minions, would pop up reminding kids to check for their nearest exits in case of an ’emergency’.
I remember being at Walmart once, and hearing screaming in the car park. My very first reaction was to push my boys into the back seat of the car.
It was teenagers messing around, but in that moment, I feared something much worse.
A handgun on the fridge
But that was seven years ago. The boys are older now – tall, handsome, 6ft teenagers – and they’re at a high school near Washington DC.
And what I’m about to say is as shocking as it is sad: we don’t think about guns and shootings very much. It’s just a part of life.
Our British family and friends assume it consumes me as a mum, that I must worry about it. But I don’t.
And that is the thing that will never really be understood outside of America.
When I first came here I was very soapboxy – especially as a fresh Brit on a military base, where my children would go for sleepovers with families with armouries, or at the very least, a handgun on top of the fridge.
I occasionally gently challenged new friends and neighbours about the “craziness” of having a gun in the house. They challenged me about the craziness of not having a gun in the house.
And for quite a time, it did consume me. I remember lying awake that first time the boys were in a house with a weapon (belonging to the perfectly respectable parents, from the perfectly normal household, who probably weren’t even Republicans), no doubt having ice cream and staying up too late. You know, doing normal things.
And then at some point, it did became the humdrum.
We even visited a range a couple of times. American friends said, quite rightly, that I couldn’t “just” object to gun ownership without understanding the psyche, the why, it was such a part of the fabric of America.
The range was weirdly mundane. There was posh coffee, warm cookies and the oh-so-American gift shop. One could buy silk underwear with a specially sewn pouch for discreetly carrying one’s handgun should one feel the need.
Families arrived to learn to shoot “responsibly” together, lots of young men came in groups bringing banter and bravado, and one time I saw a mother and daughter with matching pink rifles.
Aside from the deeply ingrained belief that it is a right, that is carved into the Constitution, and aside from the fact it was borne out of a real fear the government may one day try to take over the people, it is also a very normal thing to do at the weekend here.
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution gives Americans the right to bear arms, and about a third of US adults say they personally own a gun.
Whenever there is a mass shooting here, social media is flooded with posts from non Americans in other countries calling for “a ban” on weapons.
After the Dunblane school shooting in Scotland in 1996, in which a gunman killed 16 primary pupils and a teacher, the British government banned handguns.
Here, that won’t happen. It just won’t.
And while my objection to gun ownership personally has not faltered in my seven years of living here, I have come to understand why that won’t happen.
The Robb Elementary School shooting in Texas was so awful, so utterly and completely sickening and there is a hope among many Americans that it will finally lead to some long-awaited movement on gun control, on licensing, on tighter ownership regulations and background checks. Roughly half of Americans (53%) favour stricter gun laws.
What it won’t lead to is a ban.
A few months ago, my mobile alarmed, as it does for tornadoes and hurricanes. We were having yet another spell of bad storms so I barely looked at it until a friend texted.
Our kids were being sent home from school due to a “credible threat”.
Of course my stomach lurched. Of course, I caught my breath.
I met them at the street corner on their way home.
By then, it had been found to have been a hoax.
The school police officers and armed security patrols, which are very normal in schools here, were satisfied it was safe.
The kids all went for fast food and I went back to work.
Sadly, this country has reached a place where that is indeed humdrum.
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