For Every Lie I Unlearn

On July 23, 2022, my first born is due.

On May 14, 2022, 10 people who looked like me — like my family, like people I love — were shot and killed at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo by an 18-year-old with a newly purchased AR-15 assault rifle.

They were all Black. They were mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, grandmothers and grandfathers. They, too, had known when their first borns were due. They loved their babies and their babies loved them. They loved and were loved. I love them. I love them the way I love my Auntie for going to the same Payless grocery store for the last 20 years. I love them the same way I love my daddy for always leaning to one side, oozing with cool as he drives his electric cart down the grocery-store aisles. I have never been to a Tops Friendly Market, but I know grocery stores like it. I know the store, and I know the people even though I hadn’t met them, and now never will. 

The 18-year-old didn’t know them. He didn’t know the store. He wasn’t even from there. He drove for hours just to kill them in minutes with his gun — his tool.  

All he knew was they were Black and he was white, and that he thought he was supreme and shouldn’t be replaced. 

On July 23, 2022, my first born is due. 

And I am afraid. Are you afraid, too?

On May 24, 2022, 22 people who were at a school — learning, playing, loving, being alive — were shot, and died.

19 of them were children. 

I have had dreams of picking up my unborn child from elementary school. I have seen him running out those school doors to our car, his oversized backpack looking more like a turtle’s shell (Bulletproof backpack sales are skyrocketing!). I have heard his laugh as he recognizes our car and beelines straight for it. I have felt his hand as he’s found mine for a high five. I have smelled his apple and Lunchable breath as he begins to tell me about his day. I have tasted his sharp joy as he told me about winning a footrace at recess. 

19 parents will never be able to do any of this with their children again. 

More than 55 mass shootings happened since, leaving nearly 80 dead and many more injured.

I have had dreams of picking my unborn child up from elementary school. I have seen him running out those school doors to our car, his oversized backpack looking more like a turtle’s shell

I am ashamed. Are you ashamed, too?
I hope so. 

Then, there is a pair of us.
Tell everyone so there are more
of us and not just more
of the same, lame old lies and stories.  

On July 23, 2022, my first born is due.

And I am afraid. Are you afraid, too? 

I am afraid because to some — the ones with power, the ones who could change things, the ones who spend most of their days on the phone asking for money (They’re so good at asking for money. They always smile. They shake hands. They give speeches. They smile again, and then they ask for money. Money. Money. Money.) — the stories above have already become one story, an easy story, about good and evil. They like the easy stories — stories where good and evil never commingle and where ambiguity and complexity don’t exist. 

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

“To stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun.”

And yet still, the Uvalde Police, a bunch of “good guys with guns,” did nothing for over an hour as children used their cellphones to call their parents and to beg the police for help (My wife and I used to think 10-year-olds should not have cellphones). Big tough Texas (don’t mess!) is a state awash in good guys with guns. Still, 93 dead in mass shootings since 2017.  

If someone lied when I was a child, we would say that they told a story. Lies are stories. Not all stories are lies, but all lies are stories. 

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” is a story. It is a lie. It is just marketing.

Here is a very limited list of alternative ways to actually stop a bad guy with a gun:

• Make it illegal for bad guys to purchase guns through background checks
• Hold the gun industry responsible for gun deaths
• Restrict gun access for children, teenagers and those who are mentally unwell
• Force strict and comprehensive training and licensing for gun owners 
• Provide large-scale gun safety education 
• Mandate safe and secure gun storage
• Celebrate men who express masculinity nonviolently and without toxicity

I know someone is reading this now and thinking, “You can’t regulate or legislate against stupidity, against cruelty or against tragedy.” 

But, that is just another easy story — a partial truth masquerading as a full truth and another way to tell an easy lie. We agree upon all kinds of legislation and regulation to mitigate against the above, just not when it comes to guns. 

On July 23, 2022, my first born is due. 

I am tired of lies. Are you tired of lies, too?

This lie leads to non-action. To idleness. To acceptance. 

I do not want to accept a world in which mass shootings and murders are as common as pigeons on powerpoles. I do not want to live in a country where it’s normal for an 18-year-old to buy assault rifles and shoot up a school, or where it is normal for an 18-year old to drive three and half hours just to kill Black folks because they believe a white genocide is happening. 

I wanted to tell him that tools are imbued with intention: a spoon for eating and a gun for killing.

During a dinner, not long after another mass shooting (I cannot remember which one because there has been so many — so many bodies, so much blood — that the names and dates fall through the cracks of my skull), a man with gray-brown hair and eyes without crow’s feet, because money and privilege had allowed him much sleep, told me that a gun is only a tool. He talked the talk of nonaction — the talk of privilege and the talk that lifts you above most people’s problems.

As he talked down to me from this perch, I wanted to tell him that a spoon is a tool, too, and that different tools are made for different things. I wanted to tell him that tools are imbued with intention: a spoon for eating, a gun for killing and an AR-15 for mass killing. Intention matters, is what I should have said, but instead I rashly rose from the table — like a 10-year-old, like a fourth grader — and I stomped away. So angry. So childish. 

I took a Lyft home and I listened to Ani Difranco’s “My IQ.” In my headphones, she nearly rapped the song’s ending, 

“For every lie I unlearn
I learn something new
I sing sometimes for the war that I fight
’cause every tool is a weapon
If you hold it right.”

I do not know what weapon I should hold right now, so I am picking up my modern day pen and typing this. 

On July 23, 2022, my first born is due.

On May 14, 2022, 10 people were shot and killed at a supermarket. 

They were all Black.

On July 23, 2022, my first born is due.

On May 24, 2022, 22 people were shot and killed at a school. 

19 of them were children. 

There have already been more than 200 mass shootings this year in the United States, and it is not even the end of June.

I am ashamed. Are you ashamed, too?
I am afraid. Are you afraid, too? 

I am tired of lies. Are you tired of lies, too?
What are we going to do?