How does a parent react when he sends his beloved little one to school in small town America, where everyone knows their neighbors, and gets a text message that the schools are in lockdown? How does the parent write about it when he is a novelist who writes novels for adolescents?
Rob Kent tells the story of the lockdown in Noblesville, Indiana.
“I ran all the way home.
“I got online to read the news.
“God didn’t let my baby be murdered today. Or there is no God and I got lucky. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the Indiana in me, but I needed God to be real today and today She was.
“When I read the news, I saw the shooter had already been apprehended. And it was the middle school, not the elementary school that had been attacked. So my baby was probably okay… probably.
“It’s Little Ninja’s first full year of school. And he loves it. His teacher is truly one of the best human beings I’ve ever met. Hands down, Mrs. Sarah Dodson is a better person than I am. She has infinite patience and limitless love for her students. Every parent-teacher conference we’ve had, she’s expressed love for my son and for her job and if it were up to me who Noblesville, Indiana built our next statue of, it would be her. My son has some special needs that have worried me a whole lot, and Little Ninja has made so much progress under her tutelage. I tagged along on a field trip on a rainy October day to a pumpkin patch and I personally witnessed Mrs. Dodson muddy and exhausted, but still filled with enthusiasm for her students. When I think of the great teachers of the world, I will always think of Mrs. Dodson.
“Today, I saw Mrs. Dodson cry. Who would do that to so wonderful a woman? Who would make her hurt? What unjust, cruel, uncaring God would look down from Her heaven and allow that to happen?
“I won’t pretend to remember everything that happened this morning. It’s all a blur of panic, but I remember thinking, please, Lord, make that son of b**ch Marco Rubio hurt. Let Ayn Rand sycophant Paul Ryan feel this pain (and please, let hell be real so there’s a place for him to burn in after this life). Twist Mitch McConnell’s turtle guts with the evil he’s allowed to befall the people he was supposed to be watching out for. These are bad men, Lord, and enemies of the American people who sold their souls to the NRA and let innocent children be murdered so they could collect campaign contributions. They are worms crawling bare-bellied in the dirt and beneath my contempt.
“I know this. Every American who reads the news knows this.
“And you go straight to hell, Senator Todd Young of Indiana, who came to Noblesville to offer your empty thoughts and prayers when we know you accepted $2,896,732 in contributions from the NRA. You give up every cent of blood money you’ve taken and dedicate the rest of your life to making this right and maybe we Hoosiers can forgive you. Until then, go f**k yourself.
“I thought of all this today, and of the political tweets I’ve sent and the occasional FB posts I’ve made, but all that makes no difference when there’s a shooter in your community. I haven’t attended any political protests recently (I can’t get a sitter for Black Panther, let alone a protest march).
“All that political rhetoric, all that wasted energy raging about what crooked officials are doing hundreds of miles from here in Washington means exactly f**k all when it’s your child’s school that’s on lock down from a shooter and you get that call in the middle of your morning when you’re supposed to be focused on writing a lovely children’s story and imagining a better world…
“Mrs. Dodson called me as I was watching for Little Ninja’s school bus to tell me the bus wasn’t coming. If I’d stayed home today, if the bus had brought Little Ninja to me as usual, this incident might’ve just been another school shooting on the news. I would’ve still been terrified, but one step removed. Instead, I had to go to the school in person….
“I’m crying as I type this, because I never thought I’d see something like that in little old Noblesville, Indiana. Because that nasty, awful stuff only happens on TV. It doesn’t happen here where I live. That little girl knew she wasn’t safe, hadn’t ever been safe, not really, and I don’t know how she’ll ever feel safe in school again. And her mother couldn’t maintain. Of course, she couldn’t. I couldn’t either. I doubt I’ll ever forget today, but I know that little girl and her mother won’t forget it…
“Esteemed Reader, I’m wrung out. It’s been a long day and my heart has been broken. The school I send my one and only child to everyday was threatened and I can’t ever put Little Ninja on a bus again without wondering if I’m sending a lamb to the slaughter. I doubt any Hoosier parent here in my town will ever take that for granted again.
“What I do know is that we can’t live like this. Don’t kid yourself that this can’t happen where you live. That’s what I thought. America is a land of violence and violence will find you, even in the quiet town of Noblesville, Indiana. Even where you live…
“Esteemed Reader, your children aren’t safe either. Not in the United States.
“And that’s where I should leave it. I don’t know how we fix this. I’m not that smart. We can write to our senators, but I don’t have $2,896,732 to offer them unless y’all buy a whole lot more of my books, and politicians don’t give a sh*t about average people. We know this. They think they’re better than us and they’re wrong, but I’ve seen the members of my fellow populace, and I get it.”
I apologize for abbreviating Mr. Kent’s fine prose, but you are more likely to read his post if I leave out the best parts.
The bottom line is that Senator Todd Young sent “thoughts and prayers” to Noblesville. But he took $2,896,732 from the NRA so the folks in Indiana know the NRA bought him. It’s up to parents to vote him out.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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I expect Dienne77 to say something to the tune “schools are one the safest places in America, you need to calm down, it is not healthy to have such pathological feelings about a possibility of a gun-related incident, you overreact”.
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Well, I haven’t said that, but thank you for saying it for me, Mr./Ms. “schools are deathtraps”.
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BTW, you’ll note that SDP did, in fact, say what you are accusing me of saying.
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I did not see Backagain’s comment until after I posted mine.
But I saved you the trouble.
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And I would have said the same thing also, except as per usual you beat me to the punch! Or was it BA that beat me to the punch?
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The beauty of having other people speak for you is that you don’t need to say a word.
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“Esteemed Reader, your children aren’t safe either. Not in the United States.”
The reality is that your children are safer in school than almost anywhere else.
There are lots of legitimate ways of getting people to pay attention. Fear mongering asked on school shootings is not one of them.
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“The reality is that your children are safer in school than almost anywhere else.” – do you mean everywhere else in the U.S.? Just scroll through the list to see the difference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting – the U.S. has a separate page.
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I mean exactly what I said.
The statistical risk of a school age child being killed in school (by a shooting or something else) in the US is actually very low relative to the risk of being killed outside schools.
That does NOT mean we should not be concerned about school shootings.
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SDP: Even one child killed by a killer shooter is one too many. The fear that this is putting into our society is unimaginable. Even my daughter says for my grandson [grade 6] to carry his cell phone so that if a shooter comes to the school he is to call. [Won’t do any good but it makes her feel she is doing something.]
How many schools are now wasting money in an attempt to ‘make schools safer’? Research to find out whether or not any of this works has been stopped due to lack of funding.
The huge problem is that this is preventable. Other countries don’t have this gun problem. My friends in Malaysia wonder why the US does nothing. Why? Because of the fear instilled in a population to the point that they ‘need’ guns to protect themselves. The NRA IS a domestic terrorist organization that buys out politicians.
The killings will never stop until some legislation with TEETH is passed. If other countries can exist without guns, Americans can exist without guns.
We have reached the point where love of guns is more important than innocent children and adults. Shootings in theaters, concerts, churches, night clubs and schools does cause worry.
It doesn’t matter than statistically killings are now down in schools. They still are much higher here than the rest of the world. That is what matters.
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You misunderstood what I was saying.
I was NOT saying that school shootings are OK — not even that the death of one child is OK.
What I had a problem with is the claim that “Your children aren’t safe. Not in the United States.”
As I pointed out above
“The reality is that your children are safer in school than almost anywhere else.” And our children live in the United States. They don’t live in Japan or Australia.
You mention that people in the US have guns “Because of the fear instilled in a population to the point that they ‘need’ guns to protect themselves”.
And the basic point of my comment was that statements like “Your children aren’t safe. Not in the United States” are likely to instill MORE fear in the general public — to the point where we see armed parents going to schools that are doing lockdown drills as just happened last week.
It is good for people to be informed, but that does NOT include telling them “Your kids are not safe in school” which is likely to make parents do things that are not rational — like taking their kids out of school or visiting schools with AR15’s.
Fear mongering is rarely if ever helpful.
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SDPoet: I get what you are saying. Fear mongering is rampant. It causes parents to be overly fearful when the chances of their kid actually being shot is extremely minimal. It also causes people to buy more guns to ‘protect themselves’.
I remember one documentary by Michael Moore telling about the fear that our media puts into people. Blacks are given lots of media time and movie time as horrible people involved in gangs or dope smuggling. Guess fear sells. Why else would Trump be president?
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Also
“Schools are safer than they were in the 90s, and school shootings are not more common than they used to be, researchers say”
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Way over the top, out onto W. Waveland Avenue, but foul.
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It’s up to everyone that votes to vote anyone out of office that accepts money from the NRA. How is accepting money from the NRA different from accepting money from the US branch of the Nazi Party?
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You need to read “Gun control in the Third Reich” by Halbook see
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Recommended by the NRA?
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The author is a former lobbyist for the NRA, and he has argued firearms rights cases in court. I find it interesting, that Nazis, Communists, Fascists, and other enemies of freedom, are also bitterly opposed to individuals owning firearms.
A free nation must protect innocent citizens from violence and harm, and also protect the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms for legitimate purposes. It is not an easy task. Freedom is not easy.
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Charles,
You are a contradiction. One minute, you are for sensible restrictions on gun ownership but the next 10 comments show that you are an NRA extremist at heart.
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The Independent Institute is a libertarian, free market, limited government, blah, blah deblah, “think” tank. Who is talking about banning all guns or confiscating all guns? Japan is not a fascist or communist country, it has strict gun laws and an extremely low crime rate. Australia and the UK did not ban all guns but they did ban the semi-automatic guns and there was a big reduction in gun related deaths. The gun lovers always engage in fear mongering, it’s getting old.
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I am NOT a member of the National Rifle Association, nor any similar group, and I do NOT speak for any such organization. I do not necessarily agree with the positions promulgated by these organizations.
I do support necessary and proper restrictions on private firearms ownership, consistent with the 2d amendment, and the Heller decision.
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You speak for the NRA without pay.
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I stipulate that many of my positions on firearms rights, are similar to the positions promulgated by the National Rifle Association, and other firearms-rights organizations. Nevertheless, I do NOT speak for any individual or organization other than myself.
The NRA (often) takes the “camel’s nose in the tent” mentality. The NRA often fights against firearms legislation, with the thought that any firearms legislation is an attack on the 2d amendment. Firearms-rights organizations realize (correctly) , that gun-control groups can “:nibble away” at firearms rights, and that one day, the right to keep and bear arms for legitimate purposes will be gone.
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So the “Jews would have saved themselves from the Holocaust if they had guns” tripe is now a book.
Big deal. Having guns would NOT have saved most Jewish lives in the Holocaust. The armies were MUCH larger and stronger than armed Jews. Remember that Jews were less than a third of the population in Poland, and less than 1% of the population in Germany,
It’s a falacy, and it’s a dishonor to their memories to blame the victims.
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Great emotional post from a parent that has had to face the threat of violence against his child. I cannot imagine the Mr. Kent’s angst. I enjoyed the graphic descriptions of the NRA political toadies.
I was talking to my adult son about guns this morning, particularly the easy access to weapons. He said, “We’ve opened up Pandora’s box, and we don’t know how to close it.” I feel the same way about privatization.
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Retired teacher–your words are apt. You wrote: “I was talking to my adult son about guns this morning, particularly the easy access to weapons. He said, “We’ve opened up Pandora’s box, and we don’t know how to close it.” I feel the same way about privatization.”
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The right to keep and bear arms, predates the US Constitution. Free people have owned deadly weapons for self-defense (and other legitimate purposes) for many centuries. The “box” will not be closed. If the American people wish to forfeit the right of self-defense, and the right to keep and bear arms, they can repeal the 2d amendment. Fat Chance.
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Really? Why do we have more gun deaths than any other country in the world? Are we just special?
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The USA has the 31st highest rate of deaths caused by persons using firearms, per capita. see
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/06/555861898/gun-violence-how-the-u-s-compares-to-other-countries
Why do you think our rate is special?
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Charles: How U.S. gun deaths compare to other countries
New study of 23 high-income nations finds huge differences in gun-related homicides, suicides
Americans are 10 times more likely to be killed by guns than people in other developed countries, a new study finds.
Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the United States’ gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher. And, even though the United States’ suicide rate is similar to other countries, the nation’s gun-related suicide rate is eight times higher than other high-income countries, researchers said.
The study was published online Feb. 1 in The American Journal of Medicine.
“Overall, our results show that the U.S., which has the most firearms per capita in the world, suffers disproportionately from firearms compared with other high-income countries,” said study author Erin Grinshteyn, an assistant professor at the School of Community Health Science at the University of Nevada-Reno. “These results are consistent with the hypothesis that our firearms are killing us rather than protecting us,” she said in a journal news release.
The review of 2010 World Health Organization data also revealed that despite having a similar rate of nonlethal crimes as those countries, the United States has a much higher rate of deadly violence, mostly due to the higher rate of gun-related murders.
The researchers also found that compared to people in the other high-income nations, Americans are seven times more likely to die from violence and six times more likely to be accidentally killed with a gun…
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-u-s-gun-deaths-compare-to-other-countries/
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“Why do you think our rate is special?”
Because, according to your own data, we rank up there in gun deaths with places like Honduras and Nicaragua which are controlled by right-wing military factions and gangs that routinely round up and kill scores of people at a go, and you don’t seem to see anything wrong with being in league with a bunch of banana republics.
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Nice chart, Charles: Iraq – 4.28, U.S. – 3.85.
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The data cited in the NPR article, is not “my” data, and I do not claim ownership, nor do I necessarily agree with the conclusions therein. Other nations have different levels of violence related to persons using firearms, than our nation. I do not put our nation “in league” with nations which have authoritarian governments.
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Blood money… a good term for the funds from NRA to politicians.
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I made a protest poster. It looks like this, if you have a good imagination.
$2,896,732 IN NRA
BLOOD MONEY
[Then came a drawing of two hands filled with lots of money]
CORRUPT
SENATOR
TODD YOUNG
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I think what people outside of public schools might not realize is that the lockdowns are so frequent they’re ordinary.
Our public school has been evacuated and locked down twice this school year.
The price of a mistake is too high for schools to risk NOT locking down – they really have no choice. If there’s even a 10% chance and you’re talking about tens of slaughtered children they can’t risk it.
Is it statistically rare? Yes. But so are terrorist attacks and plane crashes. It isn’t the percentage of attacks in schools, it’s the HUGE price we pay for each event.
Does this impact kids? Well, sure it does. If adults were being evacuated out of their workplaces with the frequency that children are out of schools there would already be federal legislation to address it.
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Really good point. First few times it was really terrifying, just the lock down and evacuation practices.
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In my opinion, it sends a really powerful message to kids, too. We’re telling them we can’t help them. That they are on their own. They won’t respect us (adults) if we’re so useless and ineffective, if we can’t even protect their basic physical safety, and can you blame them?
We can’t even manage to do one thing to address this.
I hope they do better when they’re grown. I think they might. We were such poor examples they can hardly do worse.
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I do not follow your reasoning. Law Enforcement and school systems are spending vast sums and expending much effort to make schools safer. (Schools will never be safe, only safer). All indications are that even more effort will be put forth in this goal.
No one is telling children that they are “on their own”, that is absurd.
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+1
Again, I wish this blog had a voting feature.
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Dear Rob Kent: “And you go straight to hell, Senator Todd Young of Indiana, who came to Noblesville to offer your empty thoughts and prayers when we know you accepted $2,896,732 in contributions from the NRA. You give up every cent of blood money you’ve taken and dedicate the rest of your life to making this right and maybe we Hoosiers can forgive you. Until then, go f**k yourself.”
I stand with you!! [ I live in NW Indiana in Schererville.] After the recent shooting in Parkland, FL I wrote a protest letter every day to Todd Young for a month and a half. I finally did get a response from him but it looked nothing like what his official online site says.
I am disgusted with Senator Todd Young. He is crooked and has been bought out. So has President Trump. Trump got $30 million. Guess that is the purchase price of a president, at least one who cons people into thinking he cares.
I also am fed up with meaningless thoughts and prayers. I am happy that your Little Ninja made it safe through the day. How terribly sad that parents all across the US, not just in Indiana, worry each day about whether their child will come home safe. This is NOT how our society is supposed to work.
Let’s vote all of the NRA surfs out of office. We need more than worthless ‘thoughts and prayers’. We need action that matters.
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