Nandini Bajpai

Because school shootings have become normal in America

The one that changed everything for me was Sandy Hook Elementary. My kids were in middle school then, and I had always told myself that our New England town in the Boston suburbs was safe. The things we heard about on the news could not possibly happen here. And then, not two hours from our house in a community not unlike ours, twenty first graders were shot to death in their classroom, along with six of their teachers…

Let me say that again slowly.

Twenty. First graders. Shot. To. Death. In. Their. Classroom.

Putting my children on that yellow school bus with the stop sign open to keep them safe from traffic, I had had a sense of security. They had had a sense of security. That was destroyed with those precious lives at Sandy Hook Elementary School. At the candlelight vigil we held on the town common, my twelve-year-old daughter wept, ignoring the hot wax that dripped from her candle onto her precious UGG boots. My thirteen-year-old son’s dojo collected teddy bears to send some comfort to our little neighbors in Newtown, Connecticut. I still remember my son and his friend’s earnest faces that week as they practiced self-defense—block, tackle, strike—like they were in a war zone.

Instead of famous battles, we remember the names of schools: Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut; Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida; Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. And yesterday it was Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.

It never stops.

When Kamala spoke about it in New Hampshire yesterday, she said it doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t. We have to make it stop. And that is why, come rain, snow, COVID, or nor’easter, I will be voting for her this November.

Nandini Bajpai lives in the Boston area and writes books for kids and teens.