These days you pull up your van to the school and the kids get out. You get out too. You don’t bother with words, can’t bring the air to voice to letter; you hug them with your hand grazing over their backpack. ‘Dad, did you pack my lunch?’ 

‘Turkey’.

 Turkey. That’s the last word my 4th grader heard from me this morning.  Driving back to the house I’m not anywhere near tears but my sapien awareness, to date, is unrivaled.

 I’m afraid for my children, their teachers, the school nurse. Everyday.  The school my kids attend has been modernized for the new siege mentality. It’s a triage atmosphere. Police officer outside, hermetically sealed doors upon entry, receptionist standing point, and Teachers training in gun trauma wounds—these have been instituted. Staff and pupils drill for the unforeseen, for the surprise attack, the inevitable.

Inevitable. That’s the wordle. Yesterday, today, tomorrow. It’s going to Happen. It may happen. The difference between concepts ‘may’ and ‘going to’ collapsed some time ago. Interviews with student survivors of mass school shootings often say, ‘of course it was going to happen here, it was just a matter of time.’

 Our community, as is your American community, is preparing for massacre to happen. I’m a dad with 4 children in the schools; the odds one or more of my children will be assassinated at school are mathematically low. The odds my child will be murdered in cold blood while doing algebra today are TOO HIGH. Assault rifle advocates have been fighting a civil war for some time; buying their daily allotment of bullets, the Minutemen are ready for the Big One. 

 Up until now, there has not been another side of this civil unrest; not a real one anyway; misguided bravery with night sweats over Big Brother.  These dudes have been fighting their own reflection in the mirror of their phones. Until now. 

 See we, millions of moms and dads across the US, are dormant warriors. Most of us have never shot a gun. We have never reached for a weapon.  We live day to day as eagles and the mouse; we don’t use a scope because our optics are supra sensory; being a mom and dad means you can bend water, throw fire, make the ground move, cause a hurricane. It all in the wrist, the smile, the life already given. You say you are defending the constitution. We are the Constitution, written in the blood of our dying children. 

 Our army is called Loving Parents and it’s got its mission; winter for these weapons is not coming, it is here. We are coming for the assault rifles, the semi-automatics. It has already happened. Our thoughts, collectively, moms and dads, become true, and we have decided this. We are birth makers, the Marvel the comics are based on. YouTubers, gamers turned action villains, x-military freedoms fighters, these ones grow old; the back, shoulder, and knees—these go first. Loving Parents are immortal. You can’t hide from our terrible love. 

 I’m okay with ‘Turkey’ being the last words my 4th grader hears from me if it comes to that. But those who allow him to be shot like a Turkey because of an amendment, or any other, this is War.