Yesterday morning in Hobbs, New Mexico, a teacher at Highland Middle School walked between buildings and ran straight into a nightmare. His family has identified him as Kelly Matthews, a man who’s spent his whole life teaching, and according to his daughter, he wasn’t looking for trouble. He was just walking through the parking lot, doing his job, when he came across whoever was waiting there with a gun.

He is said to have taken a bullet to the stomach and another to the hip and might have caught a graze from a third. Whether he was the target or just the first body in what could have been something much worse is still an open question, and it’s one his own daughter raised out loud. She doesn’t know if he was singled out or if he simply had the misfortune of being the first person that kid crossed paths with that morning.

Now, you’d think a teacher getting shot multiple times outside a middle school would be the headline, full stop. But nearly every single article written about this shooting on the day it happened found room to mention that the homecoming parade got canceled and the football game got pushed to Saturday morning. Every outlet. Every one of them wanted you to know the Eagles would still get their game in, just a little later than planned, because apparently even a man bleeding in a school parking lot isn’t going to stand between Hobbs and homecoming. Priorities, you understand. As of the time I’m posting this, the results of the game have not made the news yet.

Then of course there’s the question of where did a middle schooler get a gun. New Mexico has a law for exactly this situation, named after Bennie Hargrove, a 13-year-old boy who was shot and killed by an actual bully at Washington Middle School in Albuquerque back in 2021. The law makes it a felony for a gun owner to let a kid get their hands on a weapon without permission, and if that kid then hurts or kills somebody with it, the owner can be looking at real charges.

Investigators haven’t said whether it applies here, because investigators haven’t said much of anything, but if that gun came out of somebody’s closet or nightstand instead of nowhere, somebody besides the shooter should be answering for it.

Hobbs Schools also have a whole system in place called ZeroEyes, an AI-powered camera network specifically built to spot guns before they get used. It’s marketed as exactly the kind of forward-thinking, technology-forward solution school districts love to trot out at board meetings. Not surprisingly, it didn’t catch this one.

The gun was reportedly concealed until it was already being fired, and the district’s response was basically a shrug. ZeroEyes is “only one tool,” they said, part of a broader safety system, not a silver bullet. Sure. I’m sure that camera would’ve flagged the kid in a heartbeat if he’d been carrying a windwood instead. But a gun tucked under a jacket? Apparently that’s above its pay grade.

But I keep coming back to what the victim’s daughter said, because I don’t think there’s a better way to put it.

“Thoughts and prayers are not enough, and something has to change,” she said. “I mean, it could have been another Sandy Hook, and I’m so exhausted. I’ve got a 4-week-old baby that I’m about to send off to school one day, and reform needs to happen.”

Except this is America, where guns and reform never meet.

(Sources)

• Teacher shot at Highland Middle School in Hobbs
• Teacher shot at Hobbs middle school
• Staff member shot by juvenile outside Highland Middle School in Hobbs
• ‘Thoughts and prayers are not enough’: daughter says Hobbs teacher was shot multiple times
• Hobbs shooting puts New Mexico’s gun law in the spotlight
• Police apprehend 13-year-old after Hobbs middle school shooting