These kids hadn't even begun to live yet. They had everything in front of them: hopes and dreams, disappointments and heartache, the loftiest successes and bitterest failures. Pizza Fridays and fancy dinners. Seeing the world and feeling wonder at it. They would have known love and loss and everything in between, the full human experience. Each one could have become anything. They deserved to become anything. Whatever your politics, whomever you vote for, whatever the color of your skin, this is what matters. Kids deserve to be safe and cherished. Educators should not be required to make "the ultimate sacrifice" while doing their jobs. The 6 people killed should be right here with the rest of us, relishing the anticipation Friday brings. The kids should be excited to see what the Easter Bunny might bring them, and the adults looking forward to a special holiday meal and church service. Summer break is coming, and I'm sure the kids and adults were both eager for its arrival.
In cancer epidemiology research, there's a concept called years of potential life lost to disease, which is an attempt to quantify the impact of the illness in a more nuanced way than incidence rates or 5 year overall survival statistics can capture. Unfortunately, some of the very worst, most aggressive pediatric cancers are diagnosed in the very youngest children and have very poor (<20%) median 5 year survival rates. A child who dies of disease loses many more years of potential life than an older adult.
Assuming each of these 3 children would have lived to be 80 years old, which is approximately the median life expectancy in the United States, 210 years of potential life were lost, not including the years remaining for each adult victim. More than two centuries. Two centuries of living, all destroyed in an instant by some stupid asshole with too much free time for navelgazing and a chip on her shoulder. I don't care what your beliefs are about guns, but I think we can agree that the individual who murdered these people for no real reason should not have had access to firearms at all, much less high powered assault rifles.
Fuck the shooter, forget her name. She had her chance, her one wild and beautiful life, and this is how she chose to use it. Look at those 6 people up there. These are the faces we should care about. These are the names we should remember.
Also, this probably makes me a moron, but when I watched the body camera footage for the first time, it honestly took a moment for my brain to register what was blurred out in the hallways. Once I realized what I was seeing, I haven't been able to get it out of my mind. Those sweet little babies, just ripped apart by bullets in a place that should have been safe. The families waiting at the reunification point for someone who wasn't coming. It's awful to contemplate.