Dear Bullet, Dear Shooter

February twenty-first, two thousand fourteen...
A day I’ll never forget, why...because that was the day my life ended....I was shot and killed by a speeding bullet that pierced the right side of my heart...or at least that’s what God told me when I saw him later that night. I don’t really know what any of that means; I was only seven years old when it happened. It’s been ten years since that day I was killed walking home from school with my big brother and twin sister. I can’t really remember too much, everything seemed to happen soo fast...but I remember the incredible hot, burning pain in my chest after I was shot, and I remember seeing my sister’s face....ghostly white as she stood beside me paralyzed with fear. If I think back hard enough, I think I can remember my brother screaming at someone, I don’t know what he was saying...was he screaming at the person who shot me, or was he yelling at someone else for help?

Dear Bullet,

      I would like you to know that I do not blame you for taking my life away and making me feel all that pain that day. I mean how could I? You didn’t know what you were doing or that you were going to embed yourself deep inside my chest. It is not your fault, nor is it you who erases as many as one thousand lives each DAY. It is not you who, in most years causes more pure devastation than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The fact is, what you did to me was nothing but a truly unfortunate accident, and that is all. What if I had been a little taller or what if I had been carrying my books like my sister was, with them against my chest? Would that have changed things, maybe you wouldn’t have been able to bury yourself so far into my heart....what if I hadn’t even gone to school at all that day...wow, none of this would have happened then, right?

So see, I don’t blame you at all...you were just doing waht you were made to do right? You didn’t know any better, and I know you didn’t mean to hit me.

Sincerely,
Victim Number 1

Dear Shooter,

      My name is Tanner R, I am writing to you because I don’t ever want you to make someone else feel the way I did when you killed me...filled with questions and pain and suffering...not knowing what’s going to happen next, or what to think or feel...if they could even feel anything at all. See, when you decided to pull that trigger and end my life with your recklessness and stupidity you didn’t just kill me...you killed a piece of everyone who ever knew me and loved me...my family and all my friends...you killed a little bit of them too!

I look down at my father and mother and all I see is that they are always fighting; they never used to do that before you killed me. It’s...it’s like they forgot how to love each other or something. I’m glad my big brother’s there to protect my sister from it all, sometimes the fighting and yelling scares her and makes her cry and want to run away. Run away to a place where she’s safe and everything is like how it used to be. I can tell my brother’s trying to be strong, but I can tell he isn’t...not really, he tries hard to hide it, but I can tell he’s not okay, not in his heart.

That’s kind of funny...how everything comes back to the heart isn’t it? I mean the heart is where love is, and happiness lives, where when you’re alive you feel sadness and love. The heart is what gives you life. My sister was wearing a heart on her necklace that our Dad had given her for her birthday this past summer before school started. But that’s where you shot me...and you made my heart start bleeding really bad, and...And I could see it on my brother’s and sister’s face just before I died, they’re hearts were broken.

Do you have a heart? Did you have one when you shot me, or did someone do something to you that made you lose yours? Why did you have to pull the trigger?

I want you to know that I think, maybe someday I will be able to forgive you, but not right now. I just wish you had been able to find a different way to handle whatever it was that made you want to kill someone, to kill ME! What was it that made that way? I know it wasn’t anything I ever did to you, but maybe someone else did something...but why couldn’t you just try and talk with them to let them know how you were feeling and why you were feeling like that? Why did you have to shoot? WHY DID YOU HAVE TO SHOOT ME?!?

I truly hope you get the chance to read this letter someday, and maybe, just maybe the next time you feel like shooting at someone you’ll stop and think about me and this letter. I really hope you can find peace and acceptance for what you did to me, and everyone who ever knew me. I also prey that when you meet God, if you meet God, that he isn’t too hard on you, and lets you see what Heaven looks like, even if He doesn’t let you in.

Sincerely yours,
Victim Number 626

***

      According to the Gun Violence Archive website in the year 2014 the total number of violent gun-related incidents reached a staggering FIFTY-ONE THOUSAND, EIGHT HUNDRED AND SIX worldwide.* Twelve thousand five hundred and eighty-five of those resulted in loss of life, while another twenty-three thousand and forty-seven caused minor, moderate, or severe injury. Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General for the United Nations said “The death toll from small arms dwarfs that of all other weapon systems – and in most years greatly exceeds the toll of the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In terms of the carnage they cause, small arms, indeed, could well be described as a ‘weapon of mass destruction’”**

The letters above written from the point-of-view of a young child who was killed in a shooting incident that claimed his life describe a fictional incident, yet one that is all too real. I would like to share with you a poem I wrote entitled “Vengeance” that, although it only addresses school shootings, I feel needs to be shared and spread around.

“Vengeance”
A quiet boy, timid and unassuming,
Pushed to the limit by peers endlessly pursuing
He shows no signs of the pain he endures
Silently wishing for a cure he sees his future fading...
Fading into oblivion...Hell, Heaven, or prison.
Nights spent awake, planning and contemplating until
Finally, he has a confession-in-manifesto written.

A quiet boy, soft-spoken and easily missed
An understatement to say he’s pissed
Can no longer dance around his limit
This is it...he must SUBMIT...
Submit after years of verbal abuse
Tortured with every trick they knew how to use
He has decided to EXACT HIS VENGEANCE!!!

A kind boy, ever smiling, striving to succeed
Feels every fucking scar their malicious words did breed
As he leaves schoolhouse walls coated in red,
Though the blood drips from his dead-steady hands
It stains those who bestowed upon him this pain,
The warning signs were ever present,
To anyone who read the message his river of tears truly sent!

The blame cast on he who snapped...
Follow the blood trail to the mirror...
Do you see where the ‘X’ is mapped?
Staring not off into blank space....
But upon your

OWN HATEFUL FACE!


      I wanted to include this poem for a couple reasons...first it brings attention to gun violence in schools (obviously,) but also because it brings to light something that really isn’t thought of, or talked about enough....and that is WHY.

Why were there over fifty-one thousand, actually closer to fifty-two thousand gun-related incidents worldwide in 2004? Is the answer really all that simple, or is there more to the puzzle? Can we really say things like ‘oh, well they obviously have too much time on their hands and play too many violent video games?” By that logic I should be getting into fist fights everyday and be a long-reigning UFC world champion because I love martial arts and have trained in them since before I can remember. Fact is though, at the time I’m writing this not only am I not currently training at all, but I haven’t competed in over six years. Should we maybe instead be asking OURSELVES why these violent incidents involving guns occur? What if we asked ourselves ‘was there something that I did to make that person feel so angry, hurt, trapped, and possibly even scared that they felt the need to pick up a loaded gun and pull the trigger?”

Suddenly some (no, not all) of those “senseless, cowardly” acts don’t seem so senseless or cowardly do they?

      Finally, I would like to share some hip/hop lyrics with you from the song “A Little More” by Cleveland rap artist Machine Gun Kelly featuring Victoria Monet. The lyrics are the hook to the song where Victoria sings:
“I scream at the top of my lungs/
But my voice couldn’t save this home/
You’re proud of the guns you hold/
But what happens now? Where can we go?”


Sincerely,
Someone with a VOICE!!

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region?id=0
http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/tolls/2014

*Geneva Declaration.2008.‘Dimensions of Armed Violence.’ Global Burden of Armed Violence.Geneva:Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development Secretariat,12 September. (Q178
**Annan, Kofi.2000.‘Freedom from Fear: Small Arms.’ Report of the Secretary-General to the Millenium Assembly of the United Nations.New York, NY:United Nations General Assembly,27 March. (Q181