January 22, 2023
We need to put on the record another public mass shooting over the weekend. It happened in Monterey Park, California, last night, when a gunman killed ten people and wounded ten others.
This morning, a shooter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, injured twelve people in what appears to have been a targeted attack at a nightclub, and this afternoon, in another targeted attack, a gunman wounded eight people in Shreveport, Louisiana.
This was not the picture I intended to post tonight, but it seems appropriate.
Again.
[Photo, “Peace,” by Peter Ralston]
Notes:
Peter and Terri Ralston can be found at their studio in Rockport, Maine, or here: https://www.ralstongallery.com/
I was in community college the day after the Las Vegas massacre when the active shooter warning/alarm went off, and it was not a drill. Our very full Intro to Psych class had 3 solid walls, so the only way out other than the doors we couldn't lock were windows we couldn't open, facing the same direction. The two guys who were just-outta-military offered up their services, and by that I mean they rigged their belts up on the industrial door closer with might-as-well-try energy, and then moved to put two of the oh-so-not-heavy-duty tables up against the doors for good measure. The professor had her phone out to get the police report, while everyone else took theirs out to send the obligatory "If anything happens, I love you" texts. News from the report: the guy seen stalking campus with a rifle was specifically seen stalking the area next to the soccer field. OMG you guys, that's a few hundred feet from us! Great. A SWAT team was being sent in. I wish I could say the energy in the room was one of rising adrenaline and agitation, but except for that one girl who was going full horror-movie hysterical, the energy could best be summed up as... bummed. "I guess it's us today. That sucks. I had some things I was really looking forward to."
Anyway, turns out some idiot had decided it would be a great idea to bring a Nerf foam-dart gun to campus - specifically, a Nerf gun they had painted to look more real - the day after the Las Vegas massacre, and a jumpy janitor saw and called it in. Once the truth was discovered, we were given the rest of the day off. The announcement was a formality though: Tthe students had already made that grimly silent collective decision for themselves. The look on that poor bus driver's face when dozens upon dozens of uncharacteristically unsmiling people were all waiting to board at once...
You don't forget the feeling of being a sitting duck. But the feeling, although sharper, did not entirely have the shock of the new. Growing up in 21st century America, you are always a little bit of a sitting duck.
You know what I am also thinking of while I'm typing this? The stove in my family's kitchen. It's one of those electric ones with the flat glass top. I appreciate what it does for us in a Marie Kondo way, but I can't imagine becoming super attached to it, or any stove. But apparently some people have VERY strong preferences, because the actual frigging President had to come out and assure everyone last week that the government was not going to be too picky about the safety rules around stoves, and that the gas ones aren't going anywhere, despite the fact that we now have found out that they are directly causing thousands upon thousands of kids to contract asthma.
My Mom has severe asthma. It causes her daily pain and discomfort, has dwindled what she can feel comfortable doing in her middle age, and now thanks to Covid, has become a source of frankly justified existential fear. I would give anything to rid her of it. But there are people in this country who would rather tens of thousands of children live their lives with that same constant lack of breath than be forced - FORCED I TELL YOU!!! - to use a different type of stove to warm their leftovers. Their stove preference is more important.
These folks are so righteous in the prioritization of their own sense of persecution, that anything and everything that they are used to has become a symbol of their "way of life," and any commonsense improvement to any of it, no matter how necessary the change or how immaterial the difference to their daily life, is somewhere from an imposition that will not stand to a full-on declaration of (cultural) war. My uncle has lost both his legs to diabetes, but these same folks would rather millions of kids have diabetes in their lives, if it means unhealthy foods they like the taste of stay on the shelves. They would rather keep spewing a torrent of fuel into the air until no children born today have any clean air in their lives, if it means the car they like the sound of stays on the market. And they would rather have innocent fellow citizens needlessly have their lives ripped from them in a randomized burst of violence each and every day if it means they can keep amassing the metal contraptions that give their uber-libertarian wild-west fantasies some more heft.
They'll be outraged no matter what, so let us give them something to REALLY be outraged about: November '24. A half-dozen congressional seats (looking at you, NY&CA), one more anti-filibuster senator (looking at you, AZ), the re-election of a still-spry fighting Irishman to the presidency, and soon after the strict federal gun control laws we need. Then we can live in TRUE freedom: freedom from this fear that affects the citizens of no other developed country, yet here has plagued a generation.
Eyes on the prize, and in the meantime stay angry. And stay safe.
"We need to put on the record..." This simple phrase, more than anything else you have written, grips my mind with the realization that we are living the writing of history...that this is the record on which future generations will form an opinion of us.
We will be seen as a time of apathy, as drunkenly sunk into our own lives and willing to ignore violence as the Russians who bought liquor (intentionally priced cheaply by the state so they would not have the coherence to revolt against the ruling classes). We stupefy ourselves with materialism, with individualism, with political correctness, while money controls our leaders. Children, churches, middle class shoppers, young dancers, and parade goers. There is no safety in this apathy. There is only shame that will live on into the future.