Midlife Meditation

Kyle Rittenhouse on his way to shooting up a peaceful protest I've been writing versions of this essay as long as I've been blogging (since 2013), and thinking about it for far longer than that. Some of those essays showed up in this space, triggering fusillades (yes, I use those words intentionally) of reactionary denial from the one or two pro-gun followers I have. I have no illusions about my ability to change the minds of such people, nor of the size of my audience--my most-read posts have garnered views in the hundreds, and usually I top out at about two dozen. Be all of that as it may, I'm writing now because I have to. The fear, anger, and disgust that's been simmering within me needs venting, and needs to be out there, whether or not anyone agrees or even reads it. The painfully obvious thesis of this piece: this country has a gun problem, and there doesn't seem to be anything effective that people in power are willing to do about it. Here's a more contr...

Students at a memorial service in Parkland, Florida If he hadn't had the gun, those seventeen people would still be alive. I can't say that truth will get lost in the pointless ritual that follows every school shooting. There are always commentators making this point, and plenty of people--the majority of Americans, in fact--who agree with it. And yet, I know that in the end, it will be ignored. How do I know this? Let's start with the responder-in-chief, the President of the United States, who, for once, spoke with measured, careful tones about what had happened at that Florida high school as an angry antisocial ex-student smuggled an assault rifle on campus and indiscriminately picked off students and teachers, then disappeared into the crowd of terrified fleeing teens. Trump didn't mention guns once in his speech. He's not alone: most politicians treat the truth at the heart of America's gun problem--that it involves guns--as a third rail. Fr...

I get nervous enough when this happens to white, middle-aged me. What must it be like for a black or brown driver? Sometimes professionals make things worse. In January 1997, a month into my second marriage, I had a panic attack that lasted all night. My heart was racing, I was unable to sleep, and I had pain in one arm. I finally asked my new wife to take me to the emergency room in McMinnville. What followed was a 36-hour cascade of unintended consequences as doctors treated symptoms with drugs that caused other symptoms that had to be treated with more drugs until, finally, I had to be admitted for the night--something that had never happened to me before, nor since. In the end, I was fine physically; and in retrospect, I came to pin the incident on a growing awareness that this hurried rebound marriage had been a horrible mistake. And the whole thing could've been avoided if one of those doctors had taken a few minutes to interview me about my emotional state. The...

The SIG SAUER MCX, the gun used to take 49 lives June 12 in Orlando. This graph tells a story: It comes from an article in The Economist  dated August 10, 2015, so it lacks data from the Santa Barbara and Orlando shootings; but even without those numbers, the statistics are stunning: the number of people killed or wounded in mass shootings has increased significantly since 2004, when the Assault Weapon Ban was permitted to expire. Here's another graph that tells a parallel story: Since the election of Barack Obama, gun sales have gone up while, simultaneously, the number of gun owners has gone down. A minority of Americans is amassing personal arsenals. From time to time, one of those gun owners opens fire in a crowded place, and these weapons of mass homicide carry out the function for which they were designed: quickly, efficiently slaughtering multiple innocents. In the wake of the Orlando shooting, anyone with a constituency has been making pronouncements....

Catherine Cawood is as tough a cop as you'll meet on any American crime drama--and she does it without packing iron. The world keeps forcing us to think about the unthinkable. Yesterday in Orlando, Florida, a young man carrying an AR-15, the same assault rifle used in the Sandy Hook massacre, single-handedly killed at least 49 people at a gay night club. As always, this incident of gun violence raised a flurry of "thoughts and prayers" from legislators in the pockets of the NRA, and of resigned frustration from less gun-lobbied politicians appealing for minor restrictions on gun sales, knowing that such measures will get nowhere in Congress, no matter how desperately the American people want them. It's as if the minority of Americans who insist on absolute libertarianism with respect to gun ownership have a louder voice than the blood of the victims. I'm not going to spend any time here arguing about whether this was an incident of international or ...

LaVoy Finicum addresses the press at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.  Note the pistol on prominent display. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword." --Matthew 26:52 It's not over. Not nearly. There are still four insurgents occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, begging on YouTube for backup, demanding full pardons before they will lay down their weapons and surrender to the authorities. Meanwhile, a right-wing organization called the Pacific Patriots Network has issued a "call to action" for militants to "peacefully" travel to Burns to protest the shooting of LaVoy Finicum following his attempt to evade a traffic stop. So even with the occupation's ringleaders in custody, this is not over. There's no way of knowing whether the militant right wing community retains any enthusiasm for Ammon Bundy's nutty cause, and if anyone at all will respond to ...

Three police officers were shot and killed last weekend. two in New York City, one in Florida. In the New York incident, the shooter then killed himself. The shooting may have been a reaction to the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. In the Florida shooting, the perpetrator is in custody; no word yet as to what motivated him. Spokespersons for police unions blamed politicians and protesters for the New York killings, insisting the cause was that too little has been done to defuse anger over the Brown and Garner killings, and suggesting that more stringent measures should have been taken to put down protests. If the context of these words wasn't so tragic, the sentiment expressed would be laughable. In fact, though, police daily put themselves on the front line between order and chaos, and from time to time, they die for their efforts. I propose a different interpretation, one that anyone who has read my blog in the past will find completely unsurprising: what ties these...

Reynolds High School is 3.6 miles away from Hartley Elementary School, where tomorrow I finish my teaching year. This morning, a person with a gun opened fire in a locker room at RHS. A teacher was wounded, a student died and, later, the shooter was killed. There may have been two other shooters. There's not much news available yet, and the district is being particularly secretive about what happened. I've written a lot in this blog about guns and shootings. I'm always upset by shootings, especially when they happen at schools, but who isn't? Imagining hundreds of children cowering in fear, being led out of the school with their hands on their heads by police checking for more firearms, and the subsequent mob scene as parents try to reunite with them, injects so much trauma into the formative experience of school that I can't help but be moved. To have it happen in my district, at the school attended by every teenaged big brother or sister of the thousand studen...