These little hashtags pepper our lives. These are mine and how they represent me. At least that is how I wanted this book to be. It was to be a book of short articles using a hashtag as inspiration. However, it has grown and changed as I have.
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In many places in the world, people don't understand American's fascination with guns. However, as a military gal who spent time in the south, I totally get it. For me, there is a meditation of sorts that occurs when I am in a gun range squeezing the trigger and a sense of pride seeing a grouping of shots exactly where I wanted it. Cleaning said weapons is equally relaxing as I rub oil on the parts and scan every millimeter of it to ensure everything is in tip-top shape for the next adventure.
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Americans also get a sense of pride to be able to say, "I can protect my family if I needed to do so," but also a fear that I might one day be forced to injure or take a life in the process. This is what goes through my mind as a gun owner and as a concealed carry card holder. I have special insurance for the occasion because there are horror stories of people who defended themselves and still had to deal with being arrested, going to jail, arguing in a trial, and then hopefully released after being acquitted of whatever charge was slapped on them.
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I remember the first time I heard about Columbine, it happened just two years before I graduated. I had family in the area and I remember talking with my friends in shock. Two teens walked into their school dressed in trench coats with a homemade bomb. They took a year to plan the school's destruction, but in the end, it didn't go off. Plan B was shooting the school with assault rifles. They killed 13 people and injured 20 before shooting themselves.
Quick Recap of Columbine: https://www.history.com/topics/columbine-high-school-shootings
It was an anomaly though. In 1999, things like that just didn't happen back then. The media, politicians, and researchers tried to come up with the reasons it happened from violent video games, goth music, bullying, and more. Schools enacted zero-tolerance policies for violence, but overall nothing really changed.
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