The night before the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, my daughter and I went through our normal nighttime ritual: we each tell each other our favorite part of the day, and then she can ask me any question that’s on her mind. Usually the question is along the lines of “how do teddy bears get made” or “can I have a treat tomorrow?” But that night Layla asked me a question about guns. And I couldn’t help but feel that there was no right way to answer, because all the answers are terrible.

In her room, Layla has a picture of Martin Luther King that she brought home from school earlier this year, and so her question that night was about how he died. I don’t believe much in lying to kids, and Layla is getting bigger - so I told her the truth. And that’s when she asked, shocked, if guns existed “in real life.” It had never occurred to my five year old daughter that guns could be anything but fantastical - something found only in stories, like fairies or unicorns. If only.

It only got harder from there. Layla wanted to know why, if guns hurt people, they were “allowed.” She wanted to know if only the good guys have guns, and if cops are good guys.



The truth is that I resent that I have to tell my daughter anything about guns. I resent that I have to be afraid for her. In 2012, after the shooting in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut that left an unimaginable 20 children dead, my husband and I got a message from Layla’s daycare that they were starting lockdown drills. They informed us that these drills taught to the children would “become as familiar as our classroom naptime routines.” She was two years old at the time.

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The majority of advice I found online about how to talk to your kids about guns had to do with teaching your children that they live in a world where guns are everywhere, rather than questioning that reality. The NRA, for example, has plenty of tips for parents and lessons for children - complete with a cartoon character named Eddie Eagle. Something tells me Eddie doesn’t let kids know just how many of them get hurt every year thanks to the obscene amount of firearms in this country.

How do I tell my daughter about that? How do I tell her that some people hurt children with guns, or that we live in a nation where people’s right to own a weapon that kills trumps her right to safety and a life free from fear?

This is not the world I want for her - not the world I want for any child.

My husband and I did the best we could that night explaining that guns were, in fact, real, and that despite the fact that they are dangerous some people still own them. I hope Layla wasn’t too confused or scared by this, and I hope she keeps asking us questions. But most of all I hope that by the time my daughter is grown, if her child has questions - she’ll be able to provide them with very different answers.