The mother searches the playground for her son’s lost identification tag. Not able to find it, she goes to the school’s safety department to request new ones, but it’ll take a few days. As she goes through the school, she keeps an eye out for danger, always wanting to keep her kids protected from possible shooters. She thinks about how she’s lost three friends to gun violence in the last two years.

At home, the mother takes off her shoes, along with her bulletproof vest, and lets the dog out. Later, she finds the dog sniffing at a dead baby bird, after which a dozen crows begin to swarm it. As she makes dinner by evening, she thinks about how she and her ex-boyfriend could simply lay outside and stargaze without any fears about what was outside.

At night, the woman lays in bed with her husband, and they start to have sex. She gets the impulse to bite him, which makes him startled and upset, after which she runs to the bathroom and locks herself inside to calm down. She recalls how they met, when she was twenty-six, a journalist, and he was thirty-nine, a prosecutor. Back in those days, she watches him prosecute a defendant for robbing a liquor store and murdering someone. After they marry, however, their lives change: the husband becomes a private lawyer, the wife edits for a psychology journal, and they feel overwhelmed by the burden of a household and its children. Soon enough, the husband joins a social movement to get guns off the streets and becomes an influential figure. She wants to leave to go to a safer, more liberal state, but he wants to stay to fight guns.

The next morning, after she bit her husband, the woman finds her kids arguing downstairs about the dead bird. She consoles her youngest boy by saying that it’s natural for things to live and then die, that it’s a world where only the strongest survive. She wishes she can send him back to therapy, but such services have proven too exhausting for their budget. She thinks about how she probably needs more therapy too for her overwhelming anxiety and forgetfulness.

At her appointment, the woman tells her therapist that she constantly hears a sound. She drifts off on a tangent and talks about how hot it’s gotten because of nationwide heat waves. Later, she talks about how nervous she is about the upcoming Supreme Court decision, which could potentially make open-carry legal everywhere in the country. For the rest of her appointment, she talks about how she feels slightly better, how her youngest boy is pulling out his hair, how she needs to find much better therapy for him.

By June, the woman hears about the city’s plans for Fourth of July, which will take serious measures to prevent another shooting incident from happening like last year. She asks her husband if she can take the kids up to the roof to watch the fireworks, but he says that’s a stupid idea. She says that their new neighborhood—which they moved to last year—is much safer than their old one, that they’ll still take protective measures while up on their roof regardless. They argue about safety, but they soon get back to arguing again about how the woman should rejoin the social movement he’s in. She shuts him down and goes to bed.

Right before the Fourth of July, the woman attends a funeral for the girl who babysat her children. The husband is too busy at work to go, and the woman figures that her children have had enough with funerals. Her daughter presses her on why she couldn’t go, after which the woman gives her a lecture on gun safety and how it’s unsafe to have guns laying around where kids can use them.

Days later, the husband prints flyers instructing people to stay inside of their houses during the Fourth of July. The woman tells him that she’ll watch the fireworks on her roof no matter what. He tries to convince her to join him in a protest action, but she shuts him down again.

The woman then drives to an Amazon grocery store, with a protective vest on, and stays attentive to her surroundings as she shops. Overwhelmed with anxiety, she gets triggered by a girl singing a nursery rhyme and tells her babysitter to stop it, but she tells her to mind her own business. Eventually, the argument escalates, and the babysitter reaches into her bag for a gun while the woman scrams, but no shooting happens.

Days before the Fourth of July, the woman edits articles for her psychology journal. Suddenly, the Supreme Court decision is announced, declaring that open-carry is allowed nationwide for everyone above the age of eighteen. Some coworkers rejoice with their guns in the air, while others bemoan the decision. Soon enough, the state of California announces its secession. As she drives home, she sees crowds of people celebrating outside with their guns. At home, her husband tells her that California could go to war. He makes a last-ditch effort to induct her back into the social movement against guns, but she accuses him of prioritizing his mission over his family’s safety.

On the roof her house, the woman watches fireworks while clad top-to-bottom in military gear. She watches the fireworks burst both with awe and trepidation. Eventually, her husband pops out of a window and tells her how stupid she is, urging her to come back inside. She does, saying how much she needed to see the fireworks, after which he holds her close. They make love in bed later that night.

In the morning, the woman and her husband find their kids arguing again about how the neighborhood is riddled with hundreds of bodies of dead crows. According to their virtual assistant, the deaths were caused by the fireworks, which disoriented the birds such that they crashed into houses. The virtual assistant also announces a war between California and the federal government. Outside, the woman sees a bird on the edge of death. She gets close to it, as if to hear what left it has to say.