What it?s like to be a Canadian parent living in the US in the era of school shootings
The road to my mother-in-law?s house is flat, with little to see. The Florida swampland is bursting with plants and birdlife, but very little of it is visible from the highway, other than the endless wall of cypress and palm trees. The monotony of the ride is only broken up by billboards that startle me every time I see one: giant advertisements for AR-15-style assault rifles, stores where you can buy guns, stores that sell ammunition for guns and shooting ranges. Just seeing these signs, which often feature a bare-legged woman seductively brandishing a weapon, shakes me. I?ve lived in the US for 15 years, but I still can?t wrap my head around the attitudes that many Americans have toward guns.
It?s hard to reconcile the fact that people here can walk into public spaces (grocery stores, libraries, college campuses) carrying a loaded weapon?and openly in some states. In 2016, more than 38,000 Americans died from gun violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 3,000 of them were children. And data show that the number of gun deaths inches up each year.
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How to talk to young kids about tough topics in the news The incremental rise in violence has calcified the horror of it for me. Becoming a mother has made it ev...
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