In the space of 72 hours, we’ve seen Portland boys, ages 7 and 11, flash a handgun at a woman in an attempted carjacking. We’ve seen the Evergreen School District lock down after a student brought a rifle to class. And we are still coming to terms with the fact that if Roberts had known what to do with that stolen AR-15, the carnage in the mall might have easily exceeded the death tolls at Aurora or Columbine. This is the culture — the gun culture — we’re passing on to the kids. Firearms are too easily accessed by the mentally ill. Semi-automatics have a starring role in “Call of Duty” and the other video games raging in the basement. And the NRA has made all gun-control efforts toxic for your neighborhood politician. If that alarms you, the alarm is sounding far too late. Guns R Us.
Tacoma. Salt Lake City. Springfield. Red Lake. Columbine. Kansas City. Tukwila. Hanover. Toronto. Aurora. Edmonton. Virginia Tech. Northern Illinois University. Brookfield. To that incomplete list of places that have suffered unfathomable tragedies we must now unfortunately add Portland. Once again, we’re left to wonder why. Why did a 22-year-old kid open fire near the Food Court in Clackamas Town Center, killing two and injuring one before running into a store and committing suicide? Why do we (yet again) have to puzzle our way through another senseless shooting? Most of all, why is it easier to get a gun than mental health treatment?
This one hit close to home- literally. Clackamas Town Center is an eight mile drive from my home. Once upon a time I worked there. I still occasionally shop there. This could have happened to any of us at any place and at any time; it just happened to be Tuesday afternoon. Now we’re left to figure out how something so terrible and impossible to understand could happen here. The truth, of course, is that Portland is as vulnerable as any other place. How can one anticipate, much less plan for, something so random and horrible?
Jacob Tyler Roberts didn’t obtain the AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle legally; he stole it from someone he knew. Once again, though, I find myself asking the same questions: Why is it legal to own a weapon whose sole purpose is to kill? If the person who Roberts stole the rifle from hadn’t been allowed to own it, perhaps Steve Forsyth and Cindy Yuille would be home with their families. Perhaps Roberts would have found some other murderous way to express the unimaginable turmoil in his soul. There’s no way to know, of course, but I can’t see how a reasonable person could argue with the assertion that lethal firepower is far too easy to obtain. Thanks to the National Rifle Association and it’s President, Wayne LaPierre, we’re saddled with a political system that values the “rights” of gun owners over human life.
Those horribly out of whack values and their consequences were visited upon Portland on Tuesday. Evidently, to Wayne LaPierre’s way of thinking, the lives of two innocent civilians are merely a cost of doing business. Next week or next month, the Unfathomable Tragedy Tour may stop in your town. How many more innocent souls must be extinguished before LaPierre allows Congress to take action on gun control…or is he really just that indifferent to human life that isn’t his own?
The rest of us pick ourselves up and move on. Nobody will ever make sense of what happened, not in a way that rectifies anything. As much as we’d like this to be about a lone, crazed gunman who snapped and did the unthinkable, it’s not. It’s about us. We need to take better care of each other. We need to use a day like Tuesday to draw closer together, instead of coming apart at the seams arguing about gun control, safety and mental illness.
Our story is ours to write. It’s about people. And it always will be. I keep coming back to where we started the week, amid those awful national stories that felt, until Tuesday, so far away.
Every time a similar tragedy occurs, we experience the same emotions and say the same things. In the end, nothing changes, because the Second Amendment is held to be absolute and inviolable; Americans should be able to obtain and possess whatever firepower they desire. It’s easier to obtain a gun in America than it is to get mental health treatment. If you can’t see the problem with that…well, I can only hope that the next innocent victim isn’t someone you know and love.
Nothing changes because we don’t demand change. Nothing changes because we don’t understand that we have the power to demand that our elected representatives stand up to the NRA. Nothing changes because we don’t demand meaningful legislation that will keep assault weapons off our streets and out of the hands of the mentally ill.
If we won’t demand change, if we won’t demand that our leaders LEAD and stand up to Wayne LaPierre, then it’s only a matter of time before this trail of tragedy and tears passes through another town. We’ll express the same dismay and consternation we’ve expressed so many times before. Nothing will change…because we’ve not demanded change. We’ll continue doing the same thing while expecting different results- the very definition of insanity.
Tuesday’s tragedy provides us with yet another opportunity to examine our lives and what’s really important. It’s a chance for us to recognize the need for us to take better care of each other. I can fervently hope that things will change, that we will change…but I know full well that, human nature being what it is, life will return to normal and we’ll continue down the same path.
Clackamas Town Center reopens today. Life, as they say, must go on…and it will. Besides, it’s Christmas; many businesses in the mall depend on Christmas sales for their yearly profit margin. The circle of life (and commerce) continues.
It’s too bad that two more senseless deaths likely still won’t be enough for this country to realize sensible, effective gun control. The Unfathomable Tragedy Tour will soon come to another town- perhaps yours- and we’ll do this all over again.
Until then….
