This picture is of a five-year-old. More specifically, my five-year-old. Energetic and friendly and excited for kindergarten. Now that boy is long past kindergarten. Still energetic and friendly, but now excited for college. In his twelve years of primary and secondary schooling, he never once had to endure a lock-down of his school; never once had to cower under a desk or huddle with other children because someone with a gun lurks nearby, maybe even right in front of him; never had to witness his classmates or his teacher shot and lying bloody in front of him; never had to close his eyes to walk past carnage to exit his school. Maybe he was just lucky.

But no child should have to endure such things. No child. Anywhere.

By the time my sons entered school, mass school shootings were already on the national radar, thanks to the Columbine school shooting in 1999.  And, sadly, mass shootings generally have made regular appearances in their lives since then:  the Westside Middle School shooting in Arkansas, the Beltway sniper attacks, the Amish school shooting, the shooting at a Brookfield hotel where church services were being held, the massacre at Virginia Tech, the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and others, including a nine-year-old girl, in Tucson, and just this year alone, the Aurora theatre shootings, the shooting at Oak Creek’s Sikh Temple, the shootings at Texas A&M, the shooting at Azana Salon & Spa in Brookfield, the Portland, Oregon, mall shootings, and now the Sandy Hook School shootings in Connecticut.