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It’s not tampons, which Idaho Republicans labeled “woke” and blocked from being funded for school bathrooms.
It’s not Michaelangelo’s David, which cost a principal her job after a parent labeled the statue too “pornographic” for a sixth grade art lesson.
It’s not a Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus duet, which a Wisconsin school just banned from a class concert because it “encourages LGBTQ acceptance and references rainbows.”
It’s not drag queens, the targets of at least 32 bills in state legislatures.
It’s not a DIsney movie about Ruby Bridges, which a Florida school stopped showing after a parent complained.
It’s not African American studies, which the College Board stripped of content after Florida banned the A.P. course.
It’s not books, which parent groups and elected officials are moving to ban in record numbers.
It’s not Legos. It’s not M&Ms. It’s not Mr. Potato Head. It’s not pronouns.
It’s guns.
Guns are laying waste to our kids.
Guns are corrupting their childhoods and killing their classmates and killing their teachers and killing their parents and killing their friends.
Guns are invading their young psyches and shaping, forever, their sense of safety, their belief in humanity, their understanding of our priorities.
Guns are sending them, terrified, under their desks and into their closets. Guns are teaching them to lay there and play dead. Guns are teaching them to pull the fire alarm so someone will come handle the active shooter. Guns are teaching them this will keep happening.
“They played the Surprise Game, which is what they call it when they have a lockdown,” a woman told reporters after she rushed to pick up her daughter from a school near Nashville’s Covenant School, where three 9-year-olds and three adults had just been shot to death. “And she did a really good job. She earned two stickers!”
Guns are teaching them the Surprise Game.
Guns are the leading cause of death for American children.
Guns. Are. The. Leading. Cause. Of. Death. For. American. Children.
And we’re banning drag queen story time.
Can we tackle more than one topic at a time? Sure. Can we engage our big brains and hearts on behalf of children’s whole, beautiful selves? Absolutely.
I can make sure my kids are eating enough, even as I make sure they’re sleeping enough, even as I make sure they’re getting their homework done, even as I make sure they’re seeing friends, even as I make sure they’re getting to their practices, even as I make sure we’re talking through hard things and funny things and complicated things.
I can, in other words, try tending to all the sides of their hearts and minds.
But if my house is on fire, I’m tending to the fire. Nothing else. Just the fire.
And our collective house is on fire.
And we’re allowing ourselves and our elected officials to be distracted by tampons and rainbows and Renaissance art and the revolutionary notion that we should affirm everyone’s history and humanity.
“You used to have kids talk about growing up to be doctors and teachers and nurses,” Pastor Brenda Mitchell told me a few weeks ago. “The reality now is, ‘I just want to grow up. I’m afraid if I go to school will I make it home? If I play on the playground? Even if I lay in my own bed and go to sleep, will I wake up in the morning? Will I see tomorrow?’”
Mitchell’s son, Kenneth, was shot and killed trying to break up a fight outside a Matteson, Illinois, bar. We were in conversation with Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, talking about the gun violence that pierces our sidewalks, our cities, our schools, our churches, our concerts, our grocery stores, our movie theaters, our yoga studios, you get the point.
“School shootings and mass shootings are about 1% of the gun violence in this country,” Watts said. “They’re horrible. But the everyday gun violence that’s impacting communities is with handguns, and it’s gun homicides and gun suicides. It’s so important to look at this issue holistically and to understand that it’s complex.”
And it’s eating our young.
We’re better than this. We have to be.
“We’re not going to fix it,” Rep. Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, said from the steps of the Capitol, the same day Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, and William Kinney, 9, and Hallie Scruggs, 9, and Mike Hill, 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, and Cynthia Peak, 61, were shot to death in his home state.
I believe him.
Which is why it’s time to elect people who will and rest at nothing until they do.
Heidi Stevens is a Tribune News Service columnist. You can reach her at heidikstevens@gmail.com, find her on Twitter @heidistevens13 or join her Heidi Stevens’ Balancing Act Facebook group.