I was a graduate teaching assistant at Northern Arizona University in 2007 when a student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Virginia opened fire in a classroom, killing 32 people and wounding 17 others. School shootings were not new; there had been at least 90 such shootings in the U.S. since 1999. What was new was having a discussion with the students in my classes about what to do if a similar shooting occurred at NAU. I will never forget that discussion – when we discovered the classroom door did not lock from the inside, that the long computer workstation tables were bolted together and could not be easily dismantled or turned on their side for use as shields, and the distance from the second-story windows to the sidewalk was at least 15 feet. One particularly feisty student climbed on the bookshelf that ran the length of the room below the windows, put one leg through the narrow open window, and announced, “I would jump. I would rather die from the fall.” Several students agreed that jumping out the window would be the best way to handle a shooter situation. Eleven years later the memory of that conversation returned as I watched a news account of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The shooter used an AR-15 to kill 17 students and teachers and wound 17 others. At that point 212 school shootings had occurred in the U.S. since 1999. I was inspired to make something that reflected the mindlessness of American violence and society’s cruel and dismal failure to protect schoolchildren, so I chose to weave a flag that incorporated the red and white stripes of the traditional flag, the thin blue line flag and the general darkness of blood and death. To the weaving I added several AR-15-sized tie tacks. I felt sick while I wove the piece and was relieved when it was finished. To date there have been at least 422 school shootings in the U.S.