A question the Paddlejam raised for me: why aren’t we doing a better job of protecting our children from gun violence?

by Jay Hiller, September 27, 2022

Photo by Joe Zlomek on Unsplash

As I mentioned yesterday, I had a great time at the Paddlejam. Before it started, the organizer mentioned that with the help of HEB, Get Out Girl had delivered 800 bikes to children in Uvalde, some who hadn’t spoken since the shooting at Robb Elementary School. That was an admirable accomplishment, delivering all those bikes to traumatized children. The question it raised for me is what kind of culture tolerates a climate where children can be attacked with automatic weapons in their classrooms? Why do we put our children at risk in this way? I have not been able to stop thinking about this since I heard that story.

As a public school employee, this fall I attended a training with the lovely name, Stop the Bleed. We learned how to choose which bullet wound on a plastic model to pack with gauze and how to apply a tourniquet. We were informed that adrenaline would kick in and we would be able to ignore blood and brain splatter and apply a tourniquet to someone screaming in pain from their wounds. This would all be done in the dark of course, since we would be in lockdown. The school is not supplying us with tourniquets in our classrooms but there are some stored with the defibrillators which are kept in the hallway. WTF. I’m going to go lift weights now.

By the way, you can buy 4 tourniquets at Amazon for $37.

Tomorrow, a lighthearted salute to chia seeds, or something like that. Subscribe here:

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