MASS SHOOTINGS: Fear is real

I am no longer a resident of Coeur d’Alene, and sentiments like those expressed by Douglas L. Weir are a big part of the reason why. The callousness and utter lack of compassion or concern for human life in his letter is just staggering; I would hate to think it was typical of a place as beautiful as Coeur d’Alene.

I, too, was a substitute teacher — for more years than Mr. Weir. And I “did” go to school fearing for my life, every day — because I had it threatened at gunpoint, three times in a single academic year. I hid students in my darkened choir room, while a teenager with a gun roamed the halls. I, my students, the staff and the faculty were all threatened; it was only because we got lucky and sheriff’s officers were able to subdue him that we came out of there alive. Your own safety does not automatically mean that all of us are safe.

Beyond this, though, lies a few simple questions:

• How many school shootings are required before it starts to matter?! How and why did you become so blasé as to think “only 100 per year” is somehow acceptable?!

• Why is suicide somehow either acceptable or completely irrelevant?! These were still people, whose lives were needlessly cut short — they’re just as dead as if somebody else shot them, so how does it “not matter” if they’re dead by their own hand?!

• Why does it matter whether it’s gang shootings or not?! Do you think crossfire is going to somehow know the difference, and only hit gang members?! Even if that were true, so what?! Again, they’re still people, regardless of what you think of them!

Mr. Weir, how many people have to needlessly die, and who do they have to be, to satisfy your hoplophilia fetish? Maybe my grandmother’s words were true: “Men raise guns when they can’t get anything else up!”

AELGYRR SONSTEGARD

Seattle