How do I explain this....

At dinner tonight, David asked about what happen in Vegas. I was a little taken aback, no- a whole freaking lot taken aback. Although the school sent out an email on talking to your kids about mass shootings, I disregarded the e-mail, thinking surely this was for the older kids. I believed most parents, like us, would completely shield their young kids from this tragic news. They are seven, some just turning eight. Babies.... but I was wrong. At chapel, the headmaster included those healing from the tragedy in Las Vegas in his prayer. This lead to David asking his friend about what happened and him getting all sorts of detail. He was told that a retired white man took a bunch of guns to a hotel room and shot people attending a concert in Las Vegas this past weekend and then killed himself. In David's version of the story, most of the dead were children and the shooter was drunk, but everything else was pretty accurate. He knew that the guy had guns that could shoot lots of bullets at once and that 59 people were dead and hundreds more injured.  

Matt and I made eye contact and then I spoke. I did what all of us do with this parenting thing - I winged it (really wishing I had read that damn email).  I told David that I would be happy to answer his questions and talk to him about what happened, but that we should do that when Henry was not around because the subject matter was sad. I told him the most important thing to know is that he is safe and this is not something that he should worry about it. He asked why anyone would do this? He asked why guns were invented? How they killed so many people? Why did people even have guns? 

Truthfully, I can't answer his questions. I mean, in the most basic sense, even David gets the evolution of swords to bullet guns (that private school tuition is paying off), but why on earth we allow average citizens to have military weapons of mass destruction capable of killing 59 people and injuring 500 more... I don't have an answer to that. Quietly frankly, I can't figure out a reasonable answer to a lot of questions when it comes to American's obsession with guns. I don't know what to tell my child, I can't honestly tell him not to worry - because I am worried. This is not a one-time occurrence. It is not unusual for dozens of Americans to be killed by guns in a single day. Gun homicides are a common cause of death in the United States, killing about as many people as car crashes (and this is not counting van, truck, motorcycle or bus accidents). And we are not normal - other rich, industrialized countries are not experiencing this problem. Yes- there is terrorism. There are attacks like 911 in other countries and Islamic terrorism is horrific and something that needs to be addressed. But we have a much bigger home-grown problem that no one wants to talk about - Americans shooting each other. Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Orlando, Dallas, Las Vegas. This is not an exclusive list. This is just what I can think of after having a glass of wine and crying because my precious sweet innocent child knows that 59  people were killed by a gunman for no reason. How can I possibly make him feel safe when this keeps happening over and over and over and over...