Show Notes
For parents in Britain, waving your children through the school gates is one of the most ordinary things in the world. In America, it can mean hoping they come home alive.
In this special Drop-In, Jemma Forte and Marina Purkiss confront the devastating school shooting in Oregon, where three children and a teacher were killed. They discuss America's extraordinary relationship with guns, the politics that keep children vulnerable, and the chilling celebration of a tragedy being stopped by a “good guy with a gun”.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is back peddling the absurd claim that children go to school as Timmy and come home as Tammy, supposedly having undergone gender reassignment surgery. Because apparently the greatest threat to American children isn't the gun violence that continues to devastate families, but the idea that they might be transgender.
From the gun lobby's determination to resist meaningful change to the online cruelty directed at a murdered five-year-old, this is a furious, heartbreaking look at a country that seems unable to protect its children.
It's a difficult listen, but an important one. And a reminder that some things we take for granted in Britain are privileges we should never stop fighting to protect.
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