I fled gunfire at an NC mall. Here’s what I want lawmakers to know about gun violence.

I want my lawmakers to know what happened to me on Black Friday last year.

My adult daughters and I decided to go to our local mall. We entered through a side door and as we approached the main part of the mall, we heard repeated loud popping noises, like a car backfiring.

My brain was still processing what I was hearing, as my eldest daughter, an elementary school teacher, was ushering me and her sister through the panicked crowds searching for the nearest exit.

Racing to the car, I was suddenly aware that my eldest daughter wasn’t by my side. I turned around to see that she had run back to help a young couple with a baby stroller who seemed frozen in place on the sidewalk outside the mall door.

Shouting at my youngest to keep going, I ran back to my older daughter as she called out, “I have to go back inside, Mom, people may need me.”

Although I don’t remember my response, she says I said to her, “Get your ass in the car. Now.” She and I ran to the car.

Like most parents, I am angry and frightened to the point of nausea at the risk my child faces every day walking into an elementary school. She’s a naturally gifted educator and she can’t imagine doing anything else.

In our current culture where higher salaries are equated with superior intellect and teachers are rewarded mostly in magic beans, she has dealt with friends and family who don’t understand why “someone smart would want to teach.” She patiently responds to those who congratulate her on “having summers off” that her annual contract is only for 10 months a year. She knows she’ll never be able to afford a home in the community where she teaches.

Nor does she expect that her school district or any other will ever receive the support services they need to identify and treat the myriad of societal and psychological issues she and her colleagues face in their classrooms, especially after the pandemic.

Three people were injured that Black Friday six months ago, including a 10-year-old hit by a ricochet in an attempted robbery. The nights after a school shooting, I know my daughter does not sleep, probably going through scenarios of what she could do to keep her students safe. I too spend sleepless nights playing out different scenes in my mind, hearing those little ones scream and wondering about the teachers’ last thoughts.

I am not so naive as to assume that gun violence in this country has simple solutions. I also know that reasonable gun control measures will not prevent every unstable, single-minded individual from acting on their worst impulses.

I’m also aware that legislators represent those who elected them. They have the knowledge and authority to design and implement effective change on behalf of constituents who do not have the same information, education and power that they do.

In this case, leadership means educating those who feel that any attempt to limit gun violence would result in a curtailment of what they believe are their God-given rights. It means rejecting the 30 pieces of silver from gun lobbies that might ensure a lawmaker’s re-election.

So what are my lawmakers willing to do to protect my child? What wouldn’t they do to protect theirs? I ask because at this point in our nation’s history, if our lawmakers fail in this one thing, this is the yardstick by which they will come to be measured.

Nothing else they will accomplish in their professional or political life will ever matter to anyone who loses a loved one to gun violence that our lawmakers could have prevented. Absolutely nothing.