My parents brought their children into the world of “Duck And Cover”. They caught the last part of it in highschool. My generation grew up with the fear of nuclear war hanging over us.

Because my father was in the US Navy we lived near Navy bases my entire childhood except for six months while my father was deployed to Vietnam. I was born just miles away from a major navy base. We moved to a major navy training facility. We moved to Norfolk Va, The major navy port on the east coast.

Even when we lived in the boonies, we were still “just across the river” from a Naval Air Station.

My first “real” job was again in Norfolk. The building held a fallout shelter. (Which was so freaking empty and useless as to make my mother’s pantry look like an end of the world stockpile)

I went to University and was lived within 5 miles of a major target. I left University and was living just a mile off a major army post.

It was difficult to ever forget that at any moment we were only minutes away from nuclear annihilation. When Reagan got “won” the cold war, it felt like a great weight was lifted from my shoulders.

I’ve talked about how I and my next door neighbor friend, at 7 or so, had a serious conversation about what we would do when we were old enough to be drafted to go to Vietnam.

When we worried, it was about World War III or being drafted.

The other day I read that one of the gun control sites was blasting out how there had been over 600 mass shootings in 2022 so far. They got that number by including gang shootings AND setting the definition to include “killed OR wounded”.

Not what we think about when we think “mass shootings.” On the other hand, I’m not sure they included the mall shooting where the kid with the Glocked put 8 out of 10 rounds on target at distance within 15 seconds of the asshole opening fire.

My kids are high school age. The schools here spend way to much money on “preventing school shootings.” For some reason they spend more time thinking about keeping people out than in actual protection. Though they have finally figured out how to keep bad guys out. They just don’t let anybody into the building….

I asked my daughter for a song for us today. She provided me a song. It is about a school shooter. According to her it is well known amongst highschool students. School shootings are her generation’s “duck and cover”.