Up & Coming Weekly

4 UCW SEPTEMBER 29-OCTOBER 5, 2021 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM STAFF PUBLISHER Bill Bowman Bill@upandcomingweekly.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Janice Burton OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Paulette Naylor accounting@upandcomingweekly.com EDITOR April Olsen editor@upandcomingweekly.com PRODUCTION MANAGER/ GRAPHIC DESIGNER Dylan Hooker art@upandcomingweekly.com STAFF WRITER Elaina J. Martin REPORTER Jeff Thompson MARKETING ASSOCIATE Linda McAlister Brown linda@upandcomingweekly.com DISTRIBUTION MANAGER/SALES ADMINISTRATOR Laurel Handforth laurel@upandcomingweekly.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Margaret Dickson, Pitt Dickey, D.G. Martin, John Hood, Jim Jones, Shanessa Fenner, Crissy Neville COVER Design by Dylan Hooker –––––––––––- Up & Coming Weekly www.upandcomingweekly.com 208 Rowan St. P.O. Box 53461 Fayetteville, NC 28305 PHONE: 910-484-6200- FAX: 910-484-9218 Up & Coming Weekly is a "Quality of Life" publication with local features, news and information on what's happening in and around the Fayetteville/Cumberland County community. Up & Coming Weekly is published weekly on Wednesdays. Up & Coming Weekly welcomes manuscripts, photographs and artwork for publication consideration, but assumes no responsibility for them. We cannot accept responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts or material. Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. The publisher reserves the right to edit or reject copy submitted for publication. Up & Coming Weekly is free of charge and distributed at indoor and outdoor locations throughout Fayetteville, Fort Bragg, Pope Army Airfield, Hope Mills and Spring Lake. Readers are limited to one copy per person. © 2020 by F&B Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of editorial or advertisements without permission is strictly prohibited. Various ads with art graphics designed with elements from: vecteezy.com and freepik.com. PUBLISHER'S PEN Shoot Outs: Children and guns by MARGARET DICKSON MARGARET DICKSON, Columnist. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910-484-6200. 82 64 82 83 79 82 63 64 83 66 64 65 THU SEP 30 FRI OCT 01 SAT OCT 02 SUN OCT 03 MON OCT 04 TUE OCT 05 80 58 80 59 81 59 80 58 80 58 80 58 Mostly Sunny Mostly Sunny Cloudy Cloudy Cloudy Cloudy Association of Community Publishers North Carolinians were horrified by not one but two school shootings earlier this month — at least I hope we were. e first was in Wilming- ton where a 15-year-old stu- dent at New Hanover High School was charged with attempted murder in the wounding of another student in his leg. Officials released few details because of the ac- cused's age, but his mother said the boy was new to the school and that his family had been concerned about his safety in the new setting. She said she had spoken to school administrators about those concerns. Days later a student at Mount Tabor High School in Winston Salem was shot dead at the school, and a suspect, believed to have been a fellow stu- dent, was later apprehended.City and county authorities have been even less forthcoming with information about the second shooting in a single week, presumably because of the age of the person taken into custody. At a time when students are just returning to classrooms after more than a year of COVID shutdowns, these shootings are shocking and deeply disturbing. Questions that pop up im- mediately include these. Where did the guns involved come from and how did the shooters get their hands on them? How did they get them into schools, supposedly safe places for learning, both academically and socially? What should parents do when they fear their children are walking into un- safe situations when they are entrusted to others in charge of our schools? ese are questions to which there are answers, whether we like them or not. We may find that the shooters took licensed weapons from another person without permission. We may find they smuggled them into school in back- packs, somehow bypassing school resource officers or even metal detec- tors. We may find that schools have procedures for parents to voice con- cerns and channels to pursue if they feel administrators are not listening to them. Law enforcement officials across the nation are voicing concerns about young people and guns, among them North Carolina's Attorney General Josh Stein. Stein has contacted Facebook regarding gun sales on its platforms, including Instagram, especially to un- derage buyers. More difficult are the larger, less spe- cific questions, these among them. How did we become a nation whose culture embraces firearms, with all their attendant dangers and losses? How did we become a nation where my right to own a gun supersedes your right to be safe in my presence? How much more gun violence among both adults and chil- dren are we willing to tolerate? When twenty 6- and 7-year- olds were gunned down nearly a decade ago at Sandy Hook El- ementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, millions of Ameri- cans thought, "Surely, murder- ing kindergarteners will shock us into facing the magnitude of our gun violence problem, something no other developed nation on earth faces." But that did not happen. e carnage, both small and large, continues in churches (Charleston, South Carolina), in concert venues (Las Vegas), in schools (far too numerous to enumerate), in businesses, in homes, on roadways and hiking trails. It happens to people of all ages, from infants to the elderly. Name a place in the United States, and odds are that someone has been shot there — or will be. Often the shooter is someone disaf- fected from his community and/ or family, striking out at people he believes have wronged him somehow. Some times he is taking aim at strang- ers for reasons known only to himself. Whatever the situation, it is increas- ingly apparent that Americans have lost our capacity to be shocked by violence — that the lives lost and the people who took them are now part of the wallpaper of our culture, even when they are too young to have their names made public. My guess is we feel that way until it happens to someone we love.

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