Let me tell you three stories from my life.
The first story:
My stepson was a kid with learning disabilities, one of those odd kids who get picked on. In adolescence, he had anger issues. At the time I met his father, he was hospitalized because he had attacked his mother. He was in counseling. After he reached the age of majority, he refused to go to any more counseling, even though he was fond of and had a great deal of respect for his old therapist.
As a teen, he was fixated on martial arts – not in learning them (he was physically awkward and unsure), but the associated weaponry – the throwing stars, the numchucks, etc. That turned to a fixation on guns in his twenties. It didn’t take a professional or even particular insight to see that he felt he would be empowered by weapons.
After he finished high school, he just floated for a while. He wasn’t good at holding down jobs – he’d get made fun of, and then he’d quit or get fired. It was during this period that I realized that he was doing something in various areas of the house that was *odd* (not a strong enough word, but I’m not going into details, out of respect for his privacy) enough that I was sure it was a symptom of some pretty severe psychological issues, more severe than those readily apparent. I talked to his father and mother about it, because I felt that he desperately needed to be in counseling. His mother’s reaction was that I was doing it and blaming him to make him look bad. Finally, his father came upon him in the act, and told him that he would have to go back to counseling if he wanted to continue to live with us. He moved in with his mother that same evening.
After a few years, he ended up in a job that worked out for him. Things seemed to be going along pretty well – much better than ever before, except for his really intense interest in guns. The Christmas before his death, his father suggested that we buy him a gun for Christmas, “to help him with his self esteem.” I said no way, no how – I did not think he had the emotional or psychological stability to have a gun.
Unbeknownst to anyone in the family, he had already bought himself a number of guns. We found that out the following Easter. He and his mother went out for Easter lunch. When they came home, she watched TV in the living room and he went to hang out in his bedroom, which was adjacent to the living room. He apparently accidentally pulled the trigger. The bullet went through the wall and lodged in the living room ceiling. His mother, not unnaturally, went ballistic, and told him he would have to get rid of the gun or else move out. We know this because my stepdaughter telephoned to wish them a happy Easter in the middle of the ensuing fight. Sometime later that evening, while his mother was reading in bed, he emptied the entire clip of a semi automatic. The bedroom was riddled with bullet holes – he wasn’t a good shot, but you don’t need to be a good shot if you have enough bullets.
Then he reloaded, called 911, gave the address and reported that there had been a shooting. The 911 operator asked whether an ambulance was needed, and he said, “No, they’re both dead.” When the police got there, they were, even though the police arrived within a minute – the station was just up the street.
This will sound odd, but he was not a bad person. He was not mean, or cruel. He would never have done what this Connecticut shooter did – kill children, or strangers. I would not have been surprised if he had shot co-workers who made fun of him – he had never learned how to deal with that sort of thing, and it would not have surprised me if he had lashed out violently, and the thought of that possibility is why I put my foot down about buying him a gun. But frankly, I would never have expected him to kill his mother – he loved her, very much. And, odd as it may sound, he was so law abiding that he would never have acquired a gun illegally. And I do know that he would never have had the wherewithal to use a knife.
If that gun had not been there, neither Bonnie nor Tim would have died that day. My stepdaughter would not have had to live with that day for the rest of her life, and her daughters would have known their grandmother.
Are all gun deaths so easily avoidable? No, but those two certainly were, and they are not the only ones.
The second story:
My vet was a young woman who broke up with her boyfriend. He took it badly enough that she was nervous, and started taking her dogs to the clinic with her. One day soon after, she went home for lunch, taking her dogs with her. As she pulled up at her house, her ex boyfriend stepped up to her car window and shot her in the head multiple times. Then he shot himself in the gut, not managing to kill himself. So he drove to his uncle’s for more ammunition and finished the job.
The third story:
A middle aged friend was driving home in the early evening. The highway was congested enough that traffic was stop and go. Another driver got angry because he thought my friend had cut him off. He got out of his vehicle, walked up to my friend’s car, and shot him dead.
Those are not the only such stories in my life; they just happened to occur within less than two years of each other.
