I was going to complain, to wax lyrical about the PC-ness of American Christmas. I was going to try and get a few laughs by titling it ‘The ‘C’ word’, ‘C’ standing for Christmas, the word everybody in America appears scared to utter, lest they offend someone.
But gosh, how can I? At least I and my children will have a Christmas. The same can’t be said for the 26 victims of the Connecticut shooting. At least my children are tucked up safely in bed, one of them close in age to so many of the kids who were shot dead. He is excited that one of his teeth seems loose, just as one of the little victims at Sandy Hook Elementary was said to be.
We weren’t going to tell Munchkin. What good would it have done? He is 5, going on 6, and doesn’t need to feel scared that a gunman might break into his elementary school. But when I went to pick him up from school on Friday – early for once, so desperate to hold him – the Principal told me they were planning on addressing the shootings at Monday’s school assembly. She advised me to tell him myself over the weekend.
This weekend has been a flurry of messages, texts, emails between parents I know: “Should we tell them? What should we say? Have you told yours yet? With what result?” So yes, I told both of my kids, and the speech wouldn’t have won any prizes from a psychologist, but it was real and it was honest. “There was a bad man… children were hurt… He had a gun. But you do not have to worry. You are safe. This will not happen to you.” And hugs and kisses and squeezing them tight.
A similar thing happened in the small Scottish town my parents used to live in when they first married. A man with a gun broke into a primary school in Dunblane. He killed 16 children, an adult and himself. It was 1996 and I was a journalist in London. Later, I would interview a British TV personality who paid a visit to some of the families. One of the mothers of the deceased was still in shock. After talking to the TV presenter (privately, off-camera), the mother invited her upstairs.
“Do you want to see her?” she said. “She’s up in her room. Come and meet her!” And she proceeded to lead her upstairs, where her daughter’s body was lying, fully clothed, not yet departed for the funeral home. This TV lady is a feisty thing, a tough cookie. Relaying the story to me made her cry hard.
But the Dunblane massacre will go down in British history. It was a tragedy so unthinkable in a country where guns are more or less outlawed*. Here in the USA, there are so many mass shootings (according to the Huff Post, 19 in five years), it’s honestly getting difficult to keep track.
And that, President Barack Obama, Governor Jan Brewer, NRA, Washington politicians, lobby groups, gun businesses… that is a tragedy.
* Gun laws in the U.K. are among the tightest in the world. Ownership (which is usually by hunters, gun club enthusiasts or antique collectors) requires a firearms certificate from the Police, and the rules are strict. Following the Dunblane massacre, residents in the town formed the Snowdrop Campaign, calling for a ban on handguns. It started with a petition and collection of signatures, and soon became law.
