When the news was only reporting two students dead in Lakewood Florida I lied to my son. I told him about how the school has built physical barriers that would protect him from people who want to do him harm. I told him how the people who work at the school are trained to talk to people present and assess if they are out of place, how they would escort them out by smiling and offering to help them by taking them to the office. How the nice secretaries would somehow impede someone who had decided to do harm. I lied to him, the way our leaders have to lie to us. Keep them focused on the positive, keep them feeling safe.

There are no answers from our leaders. They are only willing to do the easy things. No one tries to fix what breaks in people until they are fit to be punished. No one wants to be the leader to take an unpopular stance on guns. Our leaders will only make easy choices, like they are running a Student Body Campaign and not a powerful nation.

And in the meantime, they send us to schools; fish in a barrel. And they lie to everyone about what they are doing about it.

Good luck today. Students will ask and you will answer, but you won’t feel good about your answers either likely.