Thoughts on another school shooting

This afternoon, there was another school shooting incident, in the adjoining county from where I live.  Fortunately, the gunman did not succeed at taking any lives, and it appears that his goal was to shoot police officers as they came to protect the children from him.

As it is being told on the news, he somehow got into the school and confronted the school secretary with an AK47 and told her to call Channel 2 news.  (he also walked around the school building and fired shots) He relayed to them that he wanted to film as he killed officers.

I joked with my brother about the shooter being a punk because after they fired a few shots at him he surrendered.  Meanwhile parents were alerted, and had to pick up their kids at the nearby Walmart parking lot.

On Facebook, friend of mine are saying things like "This is why we homeschool".  I definately agree with that sentiment as it definately gave me a sense of relief to know as crazy things happened at the nearby schools over the years, that my kids were home where I could see them.  I wouldn't have to rush over to a school and go through an unfathomable level of bureacracy and procedure to get my kids back.  I'm not saying that the steps of being called one parent at a time, showing ID and then having a photo taken with the child is unnecessary, because it seems like a good procedure, but it's got to be pure torture for both the parent and the child each second that they could not wrap their arms around each other in relief.

While I never experienced anything of this magnitude, when my kids were in school, there was a weather event that caused the school to withhold the children from the parents for a couple of hours.  Just remembering the way I felt that day, I don't know that I could begin to handle the amount of stress I would have felt had there been a school shooting.  God bless those parents who had to go through this.  I can see on the news (which I am currently watching that they are all in good spirits.

Of course, these days are long past for me.  I homeschooled my kids for 10 years, and now they are in college, and I dawns on me that those days of the security of being able to have them close are gone.  There are no guarantees of safety on the college campus just like there ate no guarantees of safety in the public elementary school.  Heck, there aren't even guarantees of safety in the home.. the only difference is that they are typically within an arms reach if they are being homeschooled.