There is a story I love to tell when I want to feel a little more badass in front of friends, or when I want to endear myself to a room of conservative men. It’s a bit of the legacy of Rich White America I carry with me:
When I was eighteen, I taught little girls to shoot guns. It was my literal first duty as a camp counselor when I arrive two days after graduating from high school. It was fucking awesome. There was nothing better lying on that mattress in that little hutch in the woods of Maine, pulling the trigger, and feeing the .22 gauge rifle kick a little in my hands as a my little blank raced toward a paper target hundreds of yards away…except for watching an eight year old girl hit that target smack in the middle a minute later.
So, I get the allure of guns. They are powerful, powerful instruments. I don’t want one in my home, but if you want one (that isn’t a military grade assault rifle) fine, do you. I will say, though, that aside from these bourgeois moments of sporting fun, guns have brought nothing to my life but terror and pain. They have never saved me or protected me. Guns have never protected any normal civilian I know. I, like what feels like all Americans at this point, am not immune to the long shadow of gun violence that hangs over this country.
I’ve personally experienced the terror that comes from guns falling into the hands of the unstable, the angry, one of those men with a terrifying axe to grind. In 2009, when I was a junior in college my campus narrowly avoided becoming yet another site of a mass shooting. That spring, a mentally ill young man got ahold of a gun, drove from Massachusetts to Connecticut, snuck into our campus bookstore and shot a classmate, a brilliant, kind, joyful young woman SEVEN TIMES.
A manhunt ensued and our campus went on lockdown. The day after the shooting the sky was a close, oppressive grey and campus was utterly silent–a stark contrast from the bright sunshine and carnival atmosphere of the previous morning, when we had all been preparing to celebrate the end of another school year. A friend graciously offered to let me come stay at her family’s house in West Haven while things settled out. I remember running to her car, crouched a little, trying to duck behind large objects like soldiers do in the movies.
The name of the man who shot Johana Justin-Jinich on May 6, 2009, is Stephen Morgan. He came to Wesleyan intending to kill Johana and then other students, writing in his journal, “I think it okay to kill Jews, and go on a killing spree at this school.” He was declared not-guilty by reason of insanity and sent to Connecticut’s maximum security prison for the criminally insane. He was another person who should never, ever have been able to acquire a firearm, but did so all too easily.
The day Stephen Morgan so brutally, senselessly took Johana’s life would have been a perfect day for a mass shooting. Spring fling was a day long celebration and students started partying early. By mid-afternoon there would have been thousands of us gathered on Foss Hill for the concert. Santigold was set to be the headliner. The thought of what that day could have turned into is chilling. And it’s all too easy to visualize as mass shootings pile up in our national memory bank. One life taken should be too many. we’ve let that standard slip away through years of bad news.
We can no longer allow for the practice of the few, the angry, the irrational stealing the lives of four, twelve, or fifty people in one go to be the price of living in America. This is not freedom. An ever present fear of being shot in the streets inhibits Americans from a true “pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.” I recognize the Right to Bear Arms is codified in our Bill of Rights, but what about our Unalienable rights? Is not safety a key to liberty? Wasn’t that our forefather’s ultimate goal in creating America: to build a safe n where anyone can prosper?
Gun violence affects every single one of us. As Americans we cannot pride ourselves on being the “greatest” or the “strongest” or the “best” nation in the world if we are gunning each other down in the streets every other day. Firearm regulation will only produce a happier, safer nation.
That fact is even more true in our cities. In DC or in Chicago or LA or Baltimore or Newark, the fear I felt that one single time in my life is ever-present. We allow this to happen in our inner cities without blinking a fucking eyelash because so many expect less from these places and the people who live there. We have to do better for all, not just for some.
I implore the members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to stand up for the citizens of the United States of America to AT THE VERY LEAST pass policy change that keeps military-grade weapons out of the hands of known terrorists and unstable people. I won’t be naive enough to ask for more tonight. Because if losing twenty children at Sandy Hook couldn’t get lawmakers to ban assault weapons from citizen use, then wholesale change is still far away, but we can start to honor lives lost in Sandy Hook, Orlando and the too long list of other places with this step forward.
the loneliest baguette 