Tag Archives: Mass Shootings

Beyond

Weather Extremes and Gun Violence Show We Are in For a Bumpy Ride

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The other night I was awoken at 3:30 a.m. by a loud clap of thunder.

In this part of Houston, getting awakened in the middle of the night by a storm is nothing new. Based on weather patterns, most of the bad weather that arrives here comes in like a thief in the night.

What is odd about this latest bit of overnight extreme weather, is the fact that it seemed to come out of nowhere and just sort of formed without warning.

As I sat in bed listening to the storm, I thought to myself that it will likely become more frequent that random storms just pop up in the middle of the night.

Scientists will say that the rise in extreme weather, like more frequent hurricanes and tornadoes, is the result of global warming and climate change.

The other night I was awoken at 3:30 a.m. by a loud clap of thunder. In this part of Houston, getting awakened in the middle of the night by a storm is nothing new. Based on weather patterns, most of the bad weather that arrives here comes in like a thief in the night. As I sat in bed listening to the storm, I thought to myself that it will likely become more frequent that random storms just pop up in the middle of the night.
Photo R. Anderson

I agree with that assessment. I also believe that more should be done to address climate change to ensure that we do not turn the only planet with a habitable atmosphere into a stormy terrarium where only cold blooded creatures and aquatic life can live.

Those who do not believe in science will say that there is no correlation between more extreme weather and global warming.

The reasons for denying the facts can be both economical and political in nature. The reasons usually are the result of a selfish need on the part of the person who is denying the facts that are getting increasingly harder to ignore.

As I continued to sit in bed as the storm raged, and now fully awake with no chance of drifting back to sleep any time soon, my thoughts went from extreme weather, to extreme acts of gun violence as yet another mass shooting took place in a school earlier that day.

When I first heard about the shooting at a private school in Nashville, my first thought was, how does this keep happening?

Then, while sitting in bed listening to the storm that came out of thin air, I thought to myself, in many cases, the same people who deny that global warming is real are the ones who do not think that America has a mass shooting problem.

I will never understand how someone who sees entire towns wiped out by more frequent tornadoes, and elementary school children and their teachers getting killed by assault rifles can think that either occurrence is normal, and not something that should be addressed with the full power of the private and public sector.

Extreme weather events, and mass shootings each tear communities apart and leave lasting physical and emotional scars among the survivors.

Following the latest shooting in Nashville, many lawmakers recycled some of the talking points that emerge after every mass shooting.

The tropes of “lone wolf,” “mental illness,” and “unsecured school” filled the airwaves as politicians made themselves into human pretzels twisting and turning their words while trying to balance the needs of their big gun lobby donors with the hurt felt by average citizens.

As I always point out during my way too frequent columns after a mass shooting, I am not advocating for a repeal of the Second Amendment, or saying the answer to solving the issue of mass shootings is to take away all guns.

What I am saying, is I refuse to believe that nothing can be done to eliminate mass shootings, which as noted before, seems to be an uniquely American problem.

One particular talking point that disgusted me the most was an elected official from Tennessee who, after being asked why gun violence seemed to mostly only occur in America, said that part of price of our freedom as Americans was that we had to accept that mass shootings were just a part of life, since in order for us to be free, we have to let some people abuse that freedom in the form of gun violence.

With all due respect to the lawmaker, I refuse to accept that part of living in a democracy means that people are free to gun down people.

I also refuse to believe the narrative that the key to stopping gun violence is to turn schools into impenetrable fortresses. As shown by the various other places where a gunman has taken lives like houses of worship, movie theaters and grocery stores, a mass shooting can happen anywhere.

The shooting in Nashville also shows that locked doors can be shot through in order to gain entrance. This fact, blows to shreds the whole locked doors stop mass shootings narrative even further.

Furthermore, even if a locked door could stop a mass shooter, it would be impossible to reinforce every soft target, or to think that an armed good guy with a gun will always stop the bad guy with a gun.

To be clear, there is no way that the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms will ever be stricken from the United States Constitution. Although, one should really stop to consider whether the right to bear dozens of high-powered assault rifles is really what the founding fathers had in mind when they were amending the Constitution.

For a bit of context, here is the exact wording of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

There is a huge difference between ensuring that citizens can protect their families and property in case the British decided to invade the colonies again, as was the basis for the Second Amendment, versus using it as a jumping off point to say that there should be no regulations nor permits for the type of arms one can bear.

Instead of tightening laws, in many states, it is being made easier to own and carry firearms out in public.

For the majority of gun owners that is not an issue.

Most gun owners use their guns responsibly.

Most gun owners surveyed want stricter controls on who can own guns.

As noted in many of the columns I have written about mass shootings, I am forever thankful that mass shootings in schools were not something that I had to worry about when I was in school.

Early in my journalism career, I had the opportunity to interview a man who traveled the country teaching high school students how to survive an active shooter attack at their school. Promoting a common-sense approach may have worked 20 years ago, but I have to question whether that approach nowadays is the equivalent of telling students to hide under a desk during nuclear fallout.
Photo R. Anderson

There is hardly enough time in the school day for teachers to cover all of the subjects that students should learn without having to practice active shooter drills.

My entire life, I have heard how the United States of America is the most powerful country in the world.

I do believe that there is a lot of truth to that statement. I also believe that will great power, comes great responsibility.

That responsibility includes ensuring that children can learn in a safe environment, and that to every extent possible, everything is done to slow, it not reverse, the impacts of climate change.

As the old saying goes, it is possible to walk and chew gum at the same time. There is no reason why the aforementioned most powerful country in the world cannot address both climate change and gun violence at the same time.

In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy challenged America to reach for the stars and land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

Many scoffed at the “moonshot” speech. Yet, in July of 1969, human footprints were placed on the lunar surface in response to that quest to “go to the moon and do the other things.”

As the president said at the time, the goal to go to the moon was chosen, “not because it was easy, but because it was hard.”

In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy challenged America to reach for the stars and land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Many scoffed at the “moonshot” speech. Yet, in July of 1969, human footprints were placed on the lunar surface in response to that quest to “go to the moon and do the other things.” It is time for the elected officials and common citizens alike to unite for a 21st Century Moonshot to curb climate change and more importantly find common sense solutions to addressing gun violence and mass shootings.
Photo R. Anderson

Tackling climate change and the wholly American problem of gun violence will certainly not be easy.

However, it is time for the elected officials and common citizens alike to unite for a 21st Century Moonshot to curb climate change.

Additionally,, it is time to find common sense solutions to addressing gun violence and mass shootings.

Due to geography, I may never be able to fully prevent thunder from waking me up in the wee hours of the morning.

However, I would love to have a night where I was not holding back tears due to watching news coverage of another mass shooting.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to take a nap since I really did not get much sleep last night.

Copyright 2023 R. Anderson

Beyond

Shooting at Michigan State University Shows How Vulnerable College Campuses Are

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Earlier this week a 43-year-old man killed three people and injured five others on the campus of Michigan State University.

The shooting, which occurred on the eve of fifth anniversary of the Parkland school shooting, marked yet another example of what appears to be a uniquely American problem related to the use of guns to create mass casualty events on soft targets like schools, places of worship, grocery stores, parades, and a slew of other events where people gather.

As of February 14, 2023, there have been more mass shootings in America than there have been days of the year.  In January 2023 alone, there were 52 mass shootings that left 87 dead and 205 wounded.

Let that sink in for a moment.

This is not a column about repealing the Second Amendment, or creating a movement to take away people’s legally obtained firearms.

This is not a column about the move in some states to loosen laws that seem to make it easier for individuals to gain possession of guns and ammo.

Following a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, TX in 2019, instead of cracking down on guns, Texas made it easier for people to get guns by eliminating burdensome gun permitting and training requirements that had caused citizens to have to wait a few days to get their guns and also show that they took a course to know how to responsibly use them.
Photo R. Anderson

This is also not a column about lawmakers who fail to act to pass simple legislation that could make it harder to get and use guns to kill citizens just trying to go about their daily lives.

No, this is a column about the sad fact that everyday people are unprotected from falling victim to senseless gun violence in the most prosperous country in the world.

While no one is immune from falling victim to the plague of mass shootings, for this column my main focus is mass shooting events on college campuses which represent a small fraction of the hundreds of mass shooting events that occur in America each year.

Since 1966 when a gunman killed 15 people and injured 31 at the University of Texas in Austin, in what many consider the first mass shooting event in America, there have been 12 mass shootings on college campuses where over three people were killed leading to 99 deaths.

Prior to the Michigan State shooting, the most recent college shooting was in 2022 at the University of Virginia where three people were killed and two were injured.

Colleges and universities from sea to shining sea serve as both institutions of higher learning, as well as soft targets for would be mass shooters to prey upon.

Last year, while visiting the University of Florida to be inducted into an Honor Society, I found myself on high alert looking in the shadows for potential threats as I walked the sprawling campus.

Like many other colleges and universities, UF is a large campus that acts like a mini city surrounded by various homes, businesses, and infrastructure with no walls or gates to funnel visitors through central entry and exit points to control who comes and goes.

Like many other colleges and universities, the University of Florida is a large campus that acts like a mini city surrounded by various homes, businesses, and infrastructure with no walls or gates to funnel visitors through central entry and exit points to control who comes and goes. The same is true for Michigan State University making it nearly impossible to fully prevent mass shooting events from occurring on campus.
Photo R. Anderson

The same was true for Michigan State University where it appears the gunman entered a publicly accessible building on the edge of campus and opened fire before opening fire in another publicly accessible building full of students.

It is impossible to fully secure a college campus. So, the blame for the shooting does not fall on Michigan State University.

During my tenure as the Public Information Manager for a college, I constantly drilled myself on how I would respond to a crisis communication event on campus. Many of my colleagues thought I was crazy to spend so much time cooking up responses to scenarios that they assured me would never occur.

Then the attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred and we found ourselves faced with the need to evacuate the campus for fear that the highly explosive oil tanks that surrounded the campus would be the next target of the terrorists.

Although, the oil tanks and the campus remained unscathed, from that moment on, my “hope for the best but always plan for the worst strategy” did not seem so farfetched to my previously doubting colleagues.

Although the campus I worked on was small, it was spread out with numerous unsecured entry points. It also lacked armed security officers. While thankfully it never happened, it would have been very easy for someone to walk in off of the street and start shooting.

Unfortunately, like many campuses both then and now, there is really no way to prevent an individual from bringing a gun inside a classroom and creating a mass casualty event.

Of course, in Texas and other states, the response to mass shootings by some lawmakers would be to say that the armed good guys in the classroom would take out the armed bad guys.

There is so much wrong with that statement, but I will leave that for another column on another day.

Like I said, this is also not a column about lawmakers who fail to act to pass simple common sense legislation that could make it harder for people who should not have access to firearms from getting and using guns to kill citizens who are just trying to go about their daily lives.

Since it appears most are unwilling to take proactive steps to prevent gun violence, that leaves us in the category of reacting. Throughout my career in public affairs and strategic communication, I have always held firm to the practice of being first on the scene to deliver credible information while also being transparent about what I do not know during a fluid situation.

There is nothing wrong with saying, “I don’t have that information right now, but I will bring it to you as soon as I do have it,” in the heat of communicating in a crisis.

It is a far worse crisis communication blunder to say nothing at all as a scene unfolds leaving unqualified experts on social media to fill in the voids left by the silence of the official sources.

Based on what I have seen so far, the Michigan State University response to the shooting should be hailed as a textbook example of how to respond to an event.

Multiple jurisdictions worked in harmony with a clear command structure to secure the scene and protect all people on campus. Additionally, regular updates were provided to the media and other concerned individuals while the scene was still active.

That is a stark contrast to what occurred during the 2022 Robb Elementary shooting in Uvalde, TX. The Robb Elementary response should be added as a case study to every crisis communication and law enforcement practitioner as a prime example of what not to do during a mass shooting.

As great as the response at Michigan State was, the simple fact is something needs to be done to stop these mass shooting events from happening.

As a crisis communicator, I was pleased to see the transparent way that the incident at Michigan State was handled.

I will be more pleased if a day comes when crisis communicators and law enforcement personal do not have to respond to calls of shots fired at campuses where people are just trying to learn, or stores where people are just trying to bring home some groceries to feed their families.

America has twice as many firearms per 100 residents as the next country on the list of Top 10 gun owning countries.

We should be better than this.

And yes, I know that there are people who may not know anything else that is in the United States Constitution, but they use the Second Amendment as their lodestar allowing them to collect an arsenal of firearms.

Again, I am not suggesting that the government come and take away everyone’s guns. However, we should not be willing to just accept mass shootings as a way of life and pray that we and those we love are never the victims.

We should demand that politicians make common sense changes to gun laws to make it harder for people to use guns in mass shootings and easier for people to get the mental health resources that they need.

That can be done while still protecting people’s Second Amendment rights as well as all of the other rights outlined in the Constitution.

The real question is whether any politicians are willing to take those steps, or if they will remain content to putting on their shocked and outraged face for the cameras every time someone takes an easy to obtain firearm and kills a bunch of innocent people while crying “lone wolf” to anyone who will listen.

Students of all ages from preschool to grad school should be able to learn in their classrooms without living in constant fear that someone is going to barge in with a gun.

Likewise, people should feel safe going to see a parade, going to their house of worship, or picking up some groceries on the way home without wondering if the sound they heard was a car backfiring or someone firing a gun.

How many innocent people must be killed before politicians acknowledge there is a problem with gun violence in America and take common sense steps to prevent future attacks on everyday citizens?

The number of victims of mass shootings is already in the thousands. Will it have to reach the tens of thousands before people take proactive steps?

Or, will American society be left in a constant state of reaction where praise is given to the first responders who do things right, criticism is heaped upon those who botch the response, and thoughts and prayers are sent out to the victims along with prayers that the violence stays away from the people sending out the thoughts and prayers?

I guess this was a column about urging elected officials to do something about the unacceptable rise in gun violence and mass shootings after all.

Now if you’ll excuse me, as I said during a column last year following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary, I am off to see if I can make sense out of that another senseless act of violence and see what steps I can take to prevent another one.

Copyright 2023 R. Anderson

Beyond

Another Town, Another School: Mass Shooting Pandemic Continues to Infect America

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Yesterday another mass shooting occurred at an elementary school in America.

If the above sentence sounds devoid of emotion, it could be because at this point what more emotion is there to give at the constant and senseless acts of mass violence committed by individuals and their guns targeted at innocent people just trying to learn, or as was the case a couple of weeks ago in Buffalo, NY, just trying to get groceries?

In fact, when the first alerts started popping up on my phone, I shrugged it off as just the typical end of school year in America news. It wasn’t until the death toll numbers started to rise that I started to pay more attention.

As a journalist, I am trained to keep my emotions out of a story and just capture the facts. I like to think that is why I did not feel enraged when the first stories about the shooting started coming across my phone. In realty though, I did feel an emotion. I felt numb after realizing I don’t have any more rage to give with all of this senseless death and inaction by politicians at the local and national level to do anything about the pandemic of gun violence that shows no sign of stopping.

Within a single fourth grade classroom at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, TX, 19 children and two teachers were killed.
Photo R. Anderson

Within a single fourth grade classroom at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, TX, 19 children and two teachers were killed.

The fact that they were fourth graders hits a little close to home.

Back in my twenties and early thirties when my mom was working as a fourth-grade teacher, I would often visit her classroom.

Some years I volunteered as a weekly math instructor, and other times I just gave them a career day style speech about what it was like to be a journalist.

Thinking back now on how full of life and curiosity those kids were makes it extra difficult to picture the victims of the latest shooting who killed before their lives really had a chance to take off.

Some of the victims were even killed on the same day as the end of school awards ceremony, which should have been a day of happiness and celebration. Instead, it was a day of death and destruction.

Even those who survived will carry scars for the rest of their lives. All of the students and staff of Robb Elementary School, along with their families and the larger community are victims. Some were just lucky enough to be called survivors.

Shortly after the shooting, and before many of the bodies had even been identified through DNA evidence based on what happens when an assault rifle tears through the body of 10-year-old child, a Texas politician, who I refuse to name, stayed “on brand” when he said that the solution to ending gun violence was to arm more citizens.

Following a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, TX in 2019, instead of cracking down on guns, Texas made it easier for people to get guns by eliminating burdensome gun permitting and training requirements that had caused citizens to have to wait a few days to get their guns and also show that they took a course to know how to responsibly use them.

Following a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, TX in 2019, instead of cracking down on guns, Texas made it easier for people to get guns by eliminating burdensome gun permitting and training requirements that had caused citizens to have to wait a few days to get their guns and also show that they took a course to know how to responsibly use them.
Photo R. Anderson

In Texas they seem to go by a belief that one is just endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit and possession of as many firearms as possible.

By eliminating the pesky paperwork and allowing open Constitutional Carry, Texas lawmakers made it easier to wear a gun outside one’s pants for all the honest world to feel as the song goes.

Before I continue, let me get this statement out of the way, lest people stop reading. I am not saying to ban all guns. I am not saying the Second Amendment should be struck from the United States Constitution.

What I am saying is, who in their right mind would think that average citizens need to own assault weapons that were designed to inflict mass carnage on a battlefield in times of war?

Think of the types of guns that were around when the founding fathers wrote the Second Amendment, and then ask yourself whether those same men would have guaranteed such a wide-ranging freedom of gun ownership, without specific caveats related to high powered weapons, if assault rifles had been around at the time of the writing of the Constitution.

There is a big difference between saying someone has the right to own a single shot musket versus saying they have the right to own a high-powered assault rifle with a large capacity magazine.

This weekend while many families of the victims of the Uvalde shooting will be burying their children in tiny coffins, five hours away in Houston, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem are among the many politicians scheduled to address the attendees at the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual meeting that kicks off 72 hours after the Robb Elementary School shooting.

To his credit, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) has decided not to attend the meeting due to an “unexpected change” in his schedule. Additionally, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Houston) has opted out citing travel to Ukraine as his reason for missing the event.

One can only hope that others encounter similar unexpected schedule changes between now and the start of the conference. It is easy to say you can’t attend because you are out of the country. It is far braver to tell the NRA that you are choosing not to attend out of principle versus travel plans.

The tight knit attached at the hip holster relationship between some politicians and the gun lobbies demonstrates why it is so hard to enact common sense gun reform in America.  After every mass shooting, people call out for their elected leaders to do something about the uniquely American issue of gun violence.

Yet, instead of making lasting reform, politicians will send out thoughts and prayers and try to paint the shooter as either a lone wolf who had racist ideals, or a lone wolf who had mental health struggles.

Speaking of the mental health excuse, in a turn of phrase more suited to a 19th Century Charles Dickens novel than a 21st Century press conference following a mass shooting at an elementary school, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said earlier today that the fault in the shooting was not that of a system that allowed an 18-year-old person to buy an assault rifle and over 350 rounds of ammunition.

Instead, Abbott said that the fault fell on the community of Uvalde for not having the mental health hospital bed capacity to lock away people suffering from mental illness. Abbott definitely stayed on the guns don’t kill people branding.

To paraphrase a line from A Christmas Carol, Abbott seems to be channeling his inner Ebenezer Scrooge by saying that those with mental illness had best be locked away to decrease the surplus population of mass shootings. Pointing out all of the flaws in that stance is definitely a column for another day.

The problem with the labeling every mass shooter as a lone wolf approach is that once you start counting all of the lone wolves, they start to form a pack and bring light to a larger issue that cannot be so easily swept away by saying it was merely a single shooter.

Again, I am not saying that people do not have a right to bare arms. But seriously, what purpose does an AR-15, or other assault rifle have other than to deliver as many bullets as possible in the shortest amount of time?

Early in my journalism career, I had the opportunity to interview a man who traveled the country teaching high school students how to survive an active shooter attack at their school. Promoting a common-sense approach may have worked 20 years ago, but I have to question whether that approach nowadays is the equivalent of telling students to hide under a desk during nuclear fallout.
Photo R. Anderson

Early in my journalism career, I had the opportunity to interview a man who traveled the country teaching high school students how to survive an active shooter attack at their school.

School shootings were relatively rare when I wrote that article. In the years since, there have been countless school shootings and lives lost inside classrooms across the country with school shooting drills going from a novelty item to a part of daily life for school children of all ages.

The program was sponsored in part by a funeral home. Let that sink in for a moment. A funeral home where victims of a school shooting would end up sponsored a program trying to let students know how to survive an active shooter.

However, as many active shooter cases have shown through the years, no amount of training or preparation can stop someone in body armor from barricading themselves in a classroom and shooting innocent children and teachers at will.

I am forever grateful that when I was in school my greatest fear was whether I would get to the bus stop in time, and not whether or not some lunatic was going to burst through the door and kill me and my classmates.
Photo R. Anderson

I am forever grateful that when I was in school my greatest fear was whether I studied hard enough for a test, and not whether or not some lunatic was going to burst through the door and kill me and my classmates.

We should not continue to accept a narrative that we are a society where going to school and going to get groceries means that we could be used for target practice.

We should also not try to quickly say that every shooter was just a lone wolf who fell through the cracks of the mental health care system, or a racist with unique ideas, and therefore there is nothing to see here kids.

Of course, if history is any indication, after the victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting are buried this weekend, and the NRA convention wraps up in Houston, it will be business as usual with thoughts and prayers for all, and guns available for purchase as far as the eye can see.

And, if Governor Abbott has his way a new mental health hospital will break ground in Uvalde.

Enough is enough.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to see if I can make sense out of that another senseless act of violence and see what steps I can take to prevent another one.

Copyright 2022 R. Anderson

Ballparks, Beyond

Supermarket Shooting Shatters Safe Zone and Reignites Gun Control Debate

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When the news first broke earlier this week of a shooting inside the King Soopers in Boulder, CO I found myself flooded with various emotions. When news broke later that 10 people lost their lives, the emotional flood continued along with a realization that mundane, every day activities like going grocery shopping are no longer safe.

The tragedy struck me on several fronts. While people dying inside a grocery store, or anywhere else, is tragic, I had driven past this particular store several times during trips to Colorado. I also have many friends who live in that part of the state so my mind immediately started to wonder whether any of them had been in the store at the time of the shooting.

Waiting to hear whether any of my friends were among the victims was an especially trying period. Thankfully, my friends were not among the victims. However, for the friends and family of the 10 people who were killed, their lives will never be the same.

Aside from feeling a connection to that particular store, I also have a tie to the grocery industry as a whole. When I was a senior in high school, I started working part time at a local Albertson’s grocery store. I would end up spending four and a half years in the grocery trade before hanging up my apron at college graduation and entering the world of journalism full time.

And while those days working retail are long behind me, I have always felt a sort of kinship to those people working within the grocery industry. During the past year during the COVID-19 pandemic I was especially thankful for grocery store workers as they ensured that the shelves were stocked and that customers had the opportunity to do curbside pickup if they did not feel safe going inside the store due to COVID-19.

On November 8, 2018, one day after a gunman killed 12 people, including a police officer, at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, CA, I took part in a moment of silence at the Staples Center before an L.A. Kings hockey game. Over two years later, another mass shooting, this time at King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, CO that ended with 10 people killed, once again leaves a community and nation to wrestle with the issue of mass shootings and gun control.
Photo R. Anderson

Now, thanks to a shooting inside a grocery store that left 10 people dead, people may have an entire new reason to not feel safe doing something as simple as going inside the store to pick up a loaf of bread.

The grocery store I worked in was one of the first in the area to have a bank inside it.

It also dealt with a lot of cash with the registers. The thought that the bank, or the store in general, could be robbed was always in the back of my mind. However, we were trained to just let the robbers take the cash and to not resist. The thought being it was not worth dying over money. We also had plains clothes off duty police officers in the store during the more popular times as mitigation to prevent shop lifting.

Of course, that philosophy does not work when the person bringing a gun into the store is there not to rob it of money or products, but to rob the people inside it of life.

There is no perfect defense for a gunman intent on causing harm, versus someone just trying to grab some cash, or snow crab legs and go. That is a sobering and scary change in the threat level for people in a grocery store as well as people in any public place.

Of course, school aged children have had to face the constant fear of active shooters for over 20 years. One of my first post college graduation professional newspaper assignments was interviewing a man who ran a company that trained students and school staff on what to do during an active shooting event.

Sadly in the years since that interview the business of training people to avoid gunmen in public places has only grown in importance, and the shootings have gone from primarily taking place inside schools to occurring everywhere from movie theaters, concerts, clubs and big box retail stores to massage parlors and grocery stores.

A week before the grocery shooting in Colorado eight people lost their lives at the hand of another gunmen in Georgia who went to three different massage parlor locations on his killing spree.

There will be discussions in the coming days, weeks, and months about gun control. These discussions occur every time there is a mass shooting. The result of the discussions is usually one step forward and two steps back.

I am not going to get into the politics of gun ownership vis a vis the Second Amendment and all of the gun lobbies, Republican senators from Texas whose names rhyme with Fred Snooze, and other factions that tend to resist any calls to curb the access to high powered firearms.

And yes, there is the tried-and-true argument that always gets brought up following mass shootings that, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” One could just as easily argue that water doesn’t drown people, swallowing too much water drowns people. But I digress.

Most gun owners are responsible people who are not going to go on a shooting spree. However, for those irresponsible gun owners there needs to be a way to prevent senseless loss of life.

While stopping short of diving into the political quicksand that talk of gun control seems to generate, I will just say that mass shootings and vaccine hesitancy seem to be mostly American concepts.

One could argue that it is the very freedoms that Americans enjoy that cause the high incidents of mass shootings and vaccine resistance, but that would be too simple of an answer for a complex issue.

Until the root cause of mass shootings is identified and addressed, there will likely be more cases of heavily armed individuals killing innocent people who are just trying to go about their daily lives.

One person I saw talking about the shooting in Boulder even brought up the possibility that the isolation and restrictions of COVID-19 may be behind the shooting. Short of the gunmen directly saying what motivated him to do what he did, the experts on TV are free to hypothesize and generalize as they try to rationalize the irrational.

As the world prepares to reopen and gatherings get larger and larger it will be interesting to see if people return to normal activities in large crowds, or if the fear and isolation brought about by the restrictions of the past year cause people to think twice before heading to that packed Ballpark for a game.

Personally, I have not decided how ready I am to cram shoulder to shoulder with thousands of people inside a Ballpark once attendance restrictions are lifted. Of course, I was already tired of being crammed in like a sardine in a can before COVID-19 closed things down. Life in the press box definitely spoiled me.

So, any apprehension of returning to sitting butt cheek to butt cheek with perfect strangers has nothing to do with COVID-19 and everything to do with it being way more comfortable to watch games from home.

I will likely still attend some Minor League games and the occasional Major League game but any desire to have season tickets has gone away. Of course, whenever I do attend a game, I will continue my long-held tradition of having enhanced situational awareness of exit routes and my surroundings.

Thanks to the events in Boulder, that enhanced situational awareness will now be needed whenever I venture to any public place.

I have many fond memories of my time working in a grocery store. However, now I will be a little more cautious and aware of the people around me whenever I go inside one. I will also likely rely more heavily on curbside pickup. However, some victims of the Boulder shooting were killed in the parking lot so even curbside is no longer 100 percent safe.

I never thought that I would need to be on high alert making a Dr Pepper run. Sadly, recent events have shown that danger is all around and even the simple act of getting a massage or buying a soda and a candy bar can turn deadly.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to try to make some sense out of all of this senselessness.

Copyright 2021 R. Anderson