The benefit of being on my own is being able to write whatever I want. is this a review? I don’t know. as long as I can remember, i wanted to be a Dad, likely due to my own Dad being around but not present. I remember having dreams about having kids before I was even ten, or anyone had a birds and bees conversation.when Columbine happened in April of 1999, I was wrapping up my Sophomore year in High School. I came from a small town, and we did fire and tornado drills. I’ve never participated in an active shooter drill, or a wolf on campus event. I have had a brief seminar informing me of what to do since I work in higher education, but I’ve never had to shelter in a closet, and I don’t have kids that have had to. i honestly don’t know how so many of us can look at our kids in the mornings and say we’re doing our best, when my generation, and those before didn’t have to deal with this. I’m often sad that fatherhood wasn’t in the cards for me, but it is a blessing in many ways, because I can’t imagine sending my little one to school for the first time, knowing that kids in kindergarten will learn how to react in case someone with a gun decides today is the day. we keep offering thoughts and prayers, and act like there’s no possible fix to this existential crisis we’ve normalized into existence.

Thoughts and Prayers highlights this by showing you a billion dollar industry that has grown up around mass shooting survival training, prevention, and various items designed to make your survival more likely. kids know where to run and hide, so a classmate of theirs doesn’t blow their head off. There are simulations, essentially video games, where people play scenarios out to see if they would survive.

When have we had enough? How many dead kids is too many? Even one of the men running the seminars mentioned how unnerving it was for him to have his daughter participate in the drill, and hear her realistic screaming. Does everyone have to lose a loved one to gun violence? what is the price you’re willing to pay to keep these weapons of war on the shelves, and in reach of those who need help they aren’t getting.

This documentary takes a pretty straight approach to not commenting on, but hoping that you’ll be mortified just by the collective knowledge of this. So there’s no Michael Moore bowling for our lives, but simply the hope that those who watch will be horrified. if we can watch a hallway full of good guys with guns stand outside a classroom as kids die, obliterating the “good guy with a gun” defense, then this isn’t going to change anything. Perhaps, it might reinvigorate those appalled at the neverending stream of gun deaths, which is now the leading cause of death for children under 18.

Gimme a genie, and my first wish will be to make all these weapons disappear. Kids can’t play outside, for fear of creepers, or online because of predators, and they can’t just go to school and be a kid without the fear of being shot.

We were unable to stop it before when we were just fighting the gun lobby, do you think things could ever possibly change now that there’s an industry invested in the continuance of mass casualty events?

This had audio description, I believe by International Digital Center. I think I was too angry to focus on it.

Thoughts And Prayers preaches to the choir, as anyone with a dissenting opinion on the topic checked out years ago, and now likely has joined the now booming industry around the very thing we should be trying to stop.

Fresh: Final Grade: 8.0/10