They were newlyweds, having just marked their first wedding anniversary. They had an almost six-year-old daughter, a one-year-old daughter, and a two-month-old son; they were just 23 and 24 years old. They dropped off their daughter at cheerleading practice, then headed to Walmart for back-to-school necessities and for party supplies because they had invited their family and friends to help them celebrate their daughter’s birthday and to show off the new house of which they were so proud. His life had turned around when he met her, and they were on course for a happier future. The celebration never happened. Both were shot in the El Paso Walmart, she shielding their baby. The headline read “The baby still had her blood on him.”
He was known as a family man, a grandfather who went to the El Paso Walmart on Saturday morning to take food and water to his granddaughter and her classmates who were there raising money for their soccer team. As soon as the gunfire broke out, he moved to shield his granddaughter. His sister described him in a Facebook post as “a beautiful human being, an excellent dad, uncle, husband and brother.” A cousin said, “He always dedicated himself to his family and his work.” He lived 61 years only to die at the hands of a person who should never have been allowed to own a gun.
He was only six years old, attending a popular Northern California food festival with his mother and his maternal grandmother. The mother received two bullet wounds but survived, as did her mother, the boy’s grandmother. The little one was not so fortunate. His father arrived at the hospital to be told that his son was in critical condition and then five minutes later was notified his son had died. He was just six and a “happy kid,” according to his paternal grandmother who agonizes over the tragic unfairness of a senseless death at such an innocent age.
She was thirteen and also attending the garlic festival. She didn’t keep pace with her family as they fled; she stayed back to walk beside a relative who uses a cane. She died from the bullet that may otherwise have struck the relative.
He was not so innocent. A gang member with a long rap sheet of his own for weapons violations, he was on the scene of a Brooklyn block party when an unknown gunman opened fire. He died and eleven others were injured.
He had worked at a Southaven, Mississippi, Walmart store for about 16 years and had recently become a department manager. He was raising three children before being shot dead in the store’s parking lot. The store manager, father of two, was also killed inside the building. The gunman was a recently fired store employee who left five children fatherless.
According to the New York Times, they were “two were friends from work, enjoying a night on the town. One had recently given birth and was finally getting out of the house. Another had just gotten a new job at a place he loved.” The bar, in Dayton, Ohio, just 20 miles from my hometown–Troy, Ohio–was the scene of much celebration on that carefree Saturday night; that is, until a gunman opened fire and left 9 dead and 27 injured in a matter of seconds. His weapon of choice was a military-style rifle and a large-capacity magazine, thanks to which a total of eight children are grieving the loss of a parent.
Between July 28 and August 4, 2019, 37 people died in the United States of America. The cause? An epidemic outbreak of deadly disease? Tragic unavoidable accidents? A natural disaster, placing them at the mercy of the elements? None of the above. Within that 8-day period, those people died from senseless gun violence. These 37 deaths bring the total for 2019 to 255–which is an average of more than one person per day (CBS News). In addition to the death toll, another 79 people were shot in those same incidents, raising the total number of casualties in just 8 days to 116.
As staggering as those numbers are, they don’t include the number of devastated, grieving family members whose lives have forever changed at the whim of a madman given permission by an irresponsible Congress to own and operate weapons of mass destruction. They also don’t account for the average citizens who are terrified when they hear a car backfire or a large object hit the ground, because we all have lost something in this senseless episode of American history: we’ve lost our sense of safety, trust, and security. We keep tight leashes on our children who will never know the same freedoms we enjoyed in our youth; we’re nervous about normal activities like going shopping, watching a movie in the theater, or even attending our houses of worship. We’re constantly watching our backs because we live in a country where some antiquated amendment is more important than our children and our own peace of mind.
A few days ago, during a visit to New Orleans, I needed Benadryl to counteract an allergic reaction. The package, at Walgreens, was encased in a plastic lock box which could be opened only by a store employee. The security check to board the airplanes which took me to and from New Orleans required me to remove my shoes and in one case to have a minor “pat down” on my back because the metal detector had sensed something.
For years, following the deaths of seven people caused by poisoned Tylenol and the discovery that certain ingredients in over-the-counter cold and allergy medications are used to make methamphetamine (meth), the government has placed restrictions on the amount of a product that can be sold to one customer and have kept the products either in locked cases or in a secure area from which they are retrieved only after a customer has requested them.
I and all of my fellow air travelers now remove our shoes to go through security because in 2001, one terrorist, since known as the Shoe Bomber, attempted to detonate an explosive packed in his shoes during a transatlantic flight. He didn’t even succeed, yet that one botched attempt has affected security measures for air travel these 18 years and counting.
Babies rode in the front seat beside their parents until airbags were added to cars for adults’ protection. Now, because of the danger airbags pose to small people, children are required to ride in the rear seat until they reach the age determined by state laws, in many cases age 13.
In 1995, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols used an ammonium nitrate fertilizer as part of the bomb with which they killed 168 people in Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. According to various websites, restrictions on the sale of that type of fertilizer now include the following: “Anyone buying more than 25 pounds [must] register, be screened against a known terrorist list, and require any thefts to be reported within 24 hours.”
In other locations,
“Under the rules, retailers would have to obtain the name, address, telephone number and driver’s license number of people wanting to purchase ammonium nitrate fertilizer and maintain records, including the date of the sale and the amount purchased, for at least two years.
The administrative guidelines would authorize retailers to refuse to sell ammonium nitrate when it was being purchased out of season, in unusual quantities or in other suspicious circumstances.
The proposal, similar to rules in place in South Carolina and Nevada, is designed to make ammonium nitrate more secure and keep it out of the hands of terrorists, said Kenny Naylor, Fertilizer Program Administrator with the Oklahoma Dept. of Ag, Food & Forestry.”
One fertilizer bombing and people have to be registered, provide contact information, and limit their purchases to restricted amounts. Thirty-seven people killed by gunshot in eight days and nothing is done. Nothing. No. Thing.
Time Magazine recently cited a database of mass shootings compiled by Mother Jones, including the numbers of fatalities and injuries up to and including the recent El Paso and Dayton shootings. During the last 37 years, from 1982 to August, 2019, 114 mass shootings have occurred in the United States (mass shooting is defined as an incident in which at least three people are killed, not including the gunman). In those 114 shootings, 932 have been killed and another 1406 wounded. Most were innocently going about their routine lives: attending school, shopping, enjoying a little entertainment, worshiping. Some had lived long lives, others had barely had a chance to live.
If one botched shoe bombing forever changed air-travel security measures, one fertilizer bombing forever restricted fertilizer sales, and one batch of cyanide-laced Tylenol forever changed the way we purchase over-the-counter drugs, why have we had 114 shootings in 37 years? Why didn’t the first shooting motivate changes that would have prevented many of the others from ever happening? Why have we as a nation sacrificed 932 lives, along with our own sense of security, on the altar of the Second Amendment? Why is unrestricted gun ownership more important to millions of our fellow citizens than people’s lives? Why are universal background checks a greater threat than the possibility of getting killed in the mall, at the theater, at a friendly bar, or at church?
Proposals routinely rejected by Congress include mandating universal background checks; treating guns like cars and requiring registration, training, licensing, and insurance; banning private ownership of assault rifles and any type of weapon designed specifically for military use and mass killing; limiting the amount of ammunition one person can purchase, as is done with fertilizer and over-the-counter drugs; closing loopholes such as online and gun-show purchases. The most haunting and perplexing question of all is, what does anyone have to lose by the implementation of these simple, common-sense restrictions?
I rarely if ever hear anyone at an airport grumbling about removing their shoes, walking through a scanner, or placing their carry-on items in bins for screening; and I never see anyone refuse compliance, at least in part because they know their non-compliance would result in a swift removal from the airport. We’ve accepted these security measures as a normal and necessary part of life, and we willingly comply because we feel safer knowing that everyone with whom we share a plane ride has passed muster.
Yet the very mention of similar restrictions on gun ownership erases every trace of logical thought because of 14 words written 228 years ago by men who could never in their wildest imaginations have envisioned modern weaponry. Our Congress bears the blood of every life that has been sacrificed on the altar of the Second Amendment; but sadly, the citizens who have accepted death as the necessity price for their selfish freedom have blood-stained hands as well.
If that baby who was orphaned in El Paso, that grandfather whose family is left without a protector and caregiver, that six-year-old who will never experience the milestones of life, and the babies of Sandy Hook who were murdered in their little desks are an acceptable tradeoff for the right to unrestricted gun ownership, we are a despicable people. When taking a knee to protest injustice causes greater outrage than the latest slaughter, we are a people of twisted values. When our only response to human agony is the shallow mantra of “thoughts and prayers,” we are a loathsome lot indeed.
The NRA is funded by its five million members (and possibly some Russian allies), and Congress is funded by the NRA. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NRA has since 1990 contributed $22,723,137 to electing members of congress and has spent $54,557,564 on lobbying since 1998. The top five recipients of NRA contributions for 2017-2018, according to the same source, are Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), $15,800; Ted Cruz (R-TX), $9,900; John Culberson (R-TX), $9,900; John Faso (R-NY), $9,900; and Josh Hawley (R-MO), $9,900. If you noticed all of the R’s in that sentence, it’s because Democrat candidates receive a small fraction of what is given to Republican candidates.
Of course, Mitch McConnell is also heavily indebted to the gun gods; and not surprisingly, their favorite politico is Donald Trump. Here’s what the Center for Responsive Politics says about him:
“The National Rifle Association’s overall spending surged by more than $100 million in 2016, surpassing any previous annual NRA spending totals on record, according to an audit obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics.
The explosion in spending came as theNRA poured unprecedented amounts of money into efforts to deliver Donald Trump the White House and help Republicans hold both houses of Congress.”
I don’t think we need look any further for the roots of the problem. Sadly, the solution is not quite so clear. However, we have to believe that Jordan and Andre Anchondo, Jorge Cavillo García, Stephen Romero, Keyla Salazar, Brandon Gales, Anthony Brown, Lois Oglesby, and Thomas McNichols–along with the other 923 children, fathers, mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, spouses, sisters, brothers, and dear friends who have died senselessly in the last 37 years–are worth our continued diligence in fighting the great forces of darkness which have enveloped our nation.
“America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good,
America will cease to be great.”
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)