On the morning of Aug. 27 at 10:12 a.m., a friend texted me asking how close I live to Annunciation Catholic School. I told him I didn’t know. He said there was a school shooting there and that it was right by my house. I was in shock. I hadn’t experienced anything like this before.
But then I asked myself, should we really be shocked?
I started digging. And that’s when I found out there have been more than 390 school shootings since 1999. That number floored me. It saddened me. It disgusted me.
And this one hit close to home. I saw a picture of a friend of a friend’s son, who was grazed by a bullet on the back of his neck. A few inches higher or lower, left or right, and he could be dead.
After the text messages started flying through my social circle, a close friend of mine responded in our group chat that his close friend was the father of the eight-year-old who was tragically killed. That’s how thin the line is between life and death, between a news headline and a family shattered forever.
I couldn’t imagine the call that father received — the call nobody ever wants to get. I don’t know how you come back from that. I don’t know how you walk onto the scene knowing what you’re about to see.
And I can’t fathom any parent’s torment, rushing to the scene in terror as they wonder if their child is safe, injured or gone. How they could see the shattered glass where the chapel was riddled with bullets, a place meant for sanctuary turned into a crime scene.
The script after each shooting is so predictable it feels obscene. First, we mourn. Vigils, hashtags, statements. Then comes the political spectacle. Democrats shout about gun control, as if confiscation were politically possible or practically enforceable. Republicans call for more guns, more security, and maybe even arming teachers, as if we could ask over-burdened educators to become trained warriors.
By nightfall the media has split into its silos, conservative channels blaming culture, liberals blaming firearms. By the weekend, we’ve stopped talking about the dead and started talking about each other. And then silence.
Nothing happens. Until the next one. And the cycle repeats.
That number — 390 shootings — is what stays lodged in my head. Three hundred and ninety times children were shot at school, and we can only recall a handful. That ratio tells you how little we value the lives of kids when it comes to political sacrifice. We remember Columbine. We remember Sandy Hook. We remember Parkland, Uvalde, maybe a few others. The rest have become invisible.
Hundreds of families living with trauma we don’t even bother to recall.
Sorry, kids. That’s what we’re saying as a society.
Sorry, kids — your suffering wasn’t spectacular enough to stay in the news cycle.
Sorry, kids — your deaths didn’t move the needle.
That’s neglect, not numbness. We do feel sadness when it happens. We just refuse to hold onto it long enough to demand real change.
Even people who care, who follow the news, who feel the disgust, can’t keep these tragedies straight anymore. They come too fast, too often. The names, the faces, the numbers collapse into one another until the horror becomes indistinguishable. That blurring isn’t an accident. It’s what allows us to move on, to pretend we’re shocked each time, to avoid the weight of actually changing anything.
Forgetting is the coping mechanism. Neglect is the policy.
We turn tragedy into currency. Elevating symbols, scapegoats and culture wars instead of solutions. Everyone weaponizes national grief. Nobody truly attempts to solve it.
If this sounds cynical, it’s not. It’s just a record of what has already happened. After 9/11, for good or for bad, America at least tried to make changes. Some of those choices were disastrous, costly or morally wrong. But no one can say the country stood still. Systems were reorganized, laws were rewritten, security was hardened. The same urgency has never been applied to schools.
I feel terrible for the kids who live with this as their backdrop, who rehearse lockdown drills before they know their multiplication tables. I feel terrible for the parents who carry the silent dread of every school drop-off. And I feel horrible that kids have to think about this at all.
But I also hold us responsible. Not just the NRA. Not just “the other side.” Our inaction, our excuses, our political tribalism, all of it makes us complicit. Some politicians may claim budgets don’t allow for true reform, that schools can’t be hardened, that guards are too expensive. But money has never really been the issue in this country. We have always had the ability to find it.
And truth be told, America has never been afraid to run deficits. Fiscal responsibility becomes a smokescreen for moral irresponsibility.
More and more people are asking why America’s birth rate is falling, why the average age of society is climbing, why younger generations are opting out of parenthood. I read that and wonder; do you not follow the news?
Of course the birth rate is declining. If this is the world we’re building, where children have to grow up barricading classroom doors and memorizing escape routes, why would anyone feel confident bringing new life into it? Not to mention climate fears, political dysfunction, debt crises, rising living costs, even whispers of civil war. Who can blame them?
I know we can do better. Because anything is better than nothing. But until we act, we are complicit. Are we really OK risking children’s deaths to avoid measured gun control? Should we not strengthen school security, knowing the risk of more tragedy?
Why not do both? Why not sacrifice a little for the children and parents?
Corey Kvasnick is an entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and a contributor to Common Ground Thinking.