It was my daughter’s first day of kindergarten, and the early autumn air had a hint of crispness to it. As I waited in the long school pickup line, my daughter’s father made an offhand comment about the necessity of school security guards. “Somebody shot up a Catholic school in Minneapolis today,” I replied without a hint of emotion , as if I was describing the weather. Every year, there are signs of autumn’s return: a peep of red or orange in the trees, apple picking, the return of the pumpkin spice latte, and, in the United States, the academic year’s first school shooting. In the face of such routine violence, we have become collectively numb .

I was in middle school when the Columbine massacre happened, and I distinctly remember watching the footage of children jumping through the

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