Photo from NPR article linked to below, from Getty images
A few months ago, with the church shooting outside of San Antonio, I asked a question about what would happen if we focused on the victims instead of the perpetrator.
Well, thank you NPR–it’s a start.
This is the point. This is the result. And I don’t care how the shooter feels about this now. These threads of life that were cut short were people. Kids, mostly, still learning and full of potential.
And in the ring are two fighters: one for and one against guns/gun control. But they’ll stay in the corners and build walls, because that’s what always freaking happens.
But before that, keep something more important in mind: Life itself. Lives.
This senselessness is the point.
These people mattered. They still matter. They don’t just go away because the headlines do.
And this is the damned point, because “thoughts and prayers” is the most platitude-laden, bullshit, throwaway line our leaders can tweet or say before they move on to something else.
This is who matters: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/15/586095587/17-people-died-in-the-parkland-shooting-here-are-their-names?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news
The Chatty Introvert 
Preach it.
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There are photos posted on FaceBook (and other places) of victims of the shootings and I just not connected those with the Aids Quilt, another mode of remembrance that has been a key in addressing that epidemic. Perhaps, not a quilt, but something of the sort to keep the names of those untimely taken created by those that love them (and the accumulation of their numbers) in the public mind. Just a thought.
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And like the AIDS quilt, more panels added to, with the names and memories. Yes, we need to keep these young people in mind, these teachers, everyone mowed down by mass shooters. I can’t believe I nearly forgot the AIDS quilt–that was a very in-your-face and constantly renewable public display. Dunno what it would be, but yeah…there should be something to give a visual of the magnitude of this, easy to grasp. Because it’ll happen again the way things are, and I’m sick of the forgetting.
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