School Violence and American PTSD

I have never had a firsthand experience with real school violence, but I did grow up in the United States in the midst of Columbine and, more recently, Virginia Tech. In fact, the day of the Virginia Tech shootings I was living in Buffalo and nearly had to skip classes at law school to drive to Virginia to sit with Leigh's family because we could not reach her brother, who was studying architecture at VT at the time. The shooter went into the architecture building during his rampage but, luckily, Leigh's little brother decided to skip his morning classes and sleep in that day.

Between the time I was 13 and, well, today, life in the US school system has changed quite a bit so that now we all tend to have knee-jerk reactions to certain images, words and happenings. If you hear a kid saying really dark things or somebody seems overly reclusive, you tend to watch them more carefully. Images of guns and bombs have become taboo in schools, and the like.

Today I had a bit of culture clash in my own head. My French students are fascinated by American gun culture and our relationship with weapons of all sorts. As a good American who grew up in the south I appreciate the Second Amendment and what it stands for. I have contemplated owning a gun and learning how to use it, but I also have a very, very healthy fear of guns for obvious reasons. My students ask me about guns in the US and how I feel about them on a fairly regular basis. I do my best to explain why Americans view guns the way we do, I tell my own stories about holding and shooting a pistol, owning a BB gun as a child and being raised in a home with a gun for protection. My students listen with wide eyes, ask questions, and listen carefully to my explanations about how most gun violence in the US is committed using illegal weapons, so there is little correlation between the Second Amendment and gun crimes.

Today was a little different though. I was teaching a group of Prepa students on my own in a computer room when my dry erase marker started to fade out. I started opening cupboards and digging around for a new marker. I opened a cupboard that had a key dangling from its lock and saw the butt end of a pistol and the glint of its metal.

My heart stopped for a split second.

I pulled back a bit from the cupboard and then realized, not even two seconds later, that I was still in France where guns are illegal and that this was, in fact a toy gun.

Feeling releaved and a tiny bit foolish I stood up from my crouching/digging for a new pen position and confessed to my students what I had just found and the thought that went through my head. They got a good laugh out of it, begged to see the toy and were delighted when I obliged. I would only be so open with older students because I knew they would understand. They really seemed to enjoy observing the culture clash and confusion that I was experiencing internally, but was so obvious on my face.

The truth is that this was a really funny and interesting thing to experience. In spite of our many problems with gun violence in the US, I was raised to respect our right to bear arms and will continue to do so. In spite of years of observing and living certain fears as a child in American schools, I will continue to support our Constitutional right, hands down. This doesn't mean I don't believe in gun control, because I do, and it apparrently also doesn't mean that I am not at least a tiny bit traumatized from a youth filled with such unrest in our schools. At the end of the day, however, I am still an American and I will continue to try to relate the importance of certain freedoms to those who do not fully understand the correlation between American history and seemingly bizarre American rights and values.

This also doesn't mean that I will ever enjoy happening upon a firearm unexpectedly in any situation, even if it does turn out to be a shiny plastic one that makes a silly noise when you pull the trigger!