The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

 A woman was shot and killed in upstate New York last Saturday night when the car she was riding in pulled into the wrong driveway. The homeowner came out onto the front porch and fired twice. Whether the homeowner's marksmanship was very good or terribly bad, he managed to kill one of the four occupants of the vehicle, twenty year old Kaylin Gillis. 

A sixteen year old in Missouri, Ralph Yari,  was shot and critically wounded when he knocked on the wrong door looking for his siblings. The homeowner in this case opened fire through a glass door "fearing for his life." He picked up the gun before answering the door. 

You know, like we all do.

The way we tend to pull pistols when we get cut off in traffic, like William Hale did when he fired into the car in which after the driver he was arguing with at high speed shot at his vehicle, wounding his daughter. Did Mister Hale stop immediately and try to get his daughter to a hospital? Nope. He sped up, and fired several shots of his own at the offending vehicle, one of which went through the back of the car, striking the other driver's fourteen year old daughter in the back, collapsing her lung. This highway escapade took place in and around Jacksonville, Florida. 

In doing the research for this blog, I was hampered briefly by the sheer number of road rage and "mistaken identity" shootings that I needed to cull through to find the specific events about which I am writing. These were some of the most recent "accidental" shootings that have taken place with innocent victims under the age of twenty-one. Somewhere in the heads of all these gun-toting individuals' heads must have been the thought, "I'm going to be a hero. I'm a problem solver." 

That thought was stuck underneath a heap of fear and anger, and all the thoughts and prayers for the victims will not get the guns out of the hands of these ninnies who believe they're living in Dodge City. Stand your ground, by golly and expect that a jury of your ninny peers will absolve you from blame when the case comes to trial. Driving erratically can be just as deadly as using a semi-automatic pistol in traffic. We should all just assume that there is a "Trespassers Will Be Shot On Sight" sign on every doorstep in these terribly dangerous United States. 

And if we raised the age of gun ownership to twenty-one, none of these victims could have shot back. 

Featured Attraction

 Took the family out to the rock show last Friday night. I could say that it felt like a long time since we were all together, sitting and standing alternately in seats that we tried not to think about the price or relative comfort. We enjoyed ourselves: mom, dad, and son. And a friend of our son's who came along for the experience.

In between the opening act and the featured attraction, we caught up a little. We did a little reminiscing, reviewing the concerts we had attended as a family over the years. As we were regaling one another with memories of this Springsteen show and that DEVO concert, we tried to loop in our son's friend. "This is only my third concert."

Full stop. 

This guy was twenty-six years old. He spoke briefly about the Olive Tree show he had been to recently. Then he related his experience of attending a Kelly Clarkson show when he was fifteen with his sister and his parents. The MUSE show we were anxiously awaiting was the third one. It had been less than two years between rock shows for our little family. And that seemed like a long time. 

Taking our son along with us to see and hear our favorite artists is a family value for us every bit as much as Disneyland and Meatless Mondays. My wife remembered the time she went with me and our high school crew to see Cheap Trick back in 1981. 

And all the shows and venues in between.

When our little boy turned eight, we took him out to the local theater to see my New Wave heroes, DEVO. We fitted him with extra ear protection, and bought him an energy dome as a souvenir. The die was cast. 

We shared the apocryphal tale about the Bruce Springsteen concert we all attended on a school night when he was in middle school. The night before state standardized testing began for our boy. I figured someone would probably show up and take my teaching credential, but he did just fine on the assessment, thank you very much. 

As I was beginning to wax rhapsodic about all the day long festivals I had attended myself as a kid, and seeing John Belushi perform with the Blues Brothers band, the lights began to dim. It was time to add another to a very long list. 

Hindsight

 Recently it occurred to me, not for the first time, that it is a ridiculous shame that I cannot afford an electric car. My commute is almost exclusively done on a bicycle, so it's not like I am shirking my responsibility completely here, and the car we do own is a hybrid. But occasionally my wife and I are taking a drive in our fossil-fuel assisted automobile to the local burger joint to further the mess that was created long before I got here. And I am not doing everything I can do to clean it up. 

We have solar panels on our roof, but we have a gas stove. To combat this oversight, we use our electric toaster oven for as many meals as we can. But our gas furnace is what we rely on to heat the house in which we live, so quite often we can be found huddled together on the couch, wearing sweatshirts trying to hold out until we can see our breath in the living room before we turn up the thermostat. 

Okay. That last one might be a bit of an exaggeration, but here I am, sitting at my keyboard with my hoodie on. Because it's April. And it's California. If the past few months have taught me anything, it's that climate change is real and if only the generations before me had considered the outcome of such pipe dreams as "two cars in every garage," maybe things would have been different if they had been electric cars. 

One of the first cars designed by Porsche was an electric car. Just a little factoid that floats around the metaverse of what might have been. It was unleashed on the public back in 1898. This was some fifty years after the Industrial Revolution, the tail end of the Victorian era, It would still be another ten years before Henry Ford's Model T became the mass-produced norm for personal transit. It should be noted again here that Mister Ford worked for Edison Illuminating Company before setting out on his own after the turn of the century. At that time, the chief concerns with electric cars were much the same as they are today: battery life and range. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, internal combustion engines were being refined and tested, burning a refined petroleum product that came to be known as "gasoline." In 1903, Thomas Edison wrote, Electricity is the thing. There are no whirring and grinding gears with their numerous levers to confuse. There is not that almost terrifying uncertain throb and whirr of the powerful combustion engine. There is no water circulating system to get out of order—no dangerous and evil-smelling gasoline and no noise."

So, what happened to Tom's vision? In a word: Texas. Why bother working to refine battery power when the Lone Star State was sitting on enough crude oil to keep everyone's tank full for years to come. By 1935, electric cars were all but extinct. Until the son of a South African real estate developer started throwing money at a car manufacturer named for a rival to Thomas Edison, Tesla. And the polar ice caps melted. And species went extinct. And sea levels began to rise. 

And the climate began to change. 

I wish I would have bought an electric car instead of a Vega back in 1979. 

Discharge

 I am really not sure why I keep watching. I can only liken it to the response many of us have after blowing our nose. That urge to take a peek inside the Kleenex to see if anything mysterious may have been extruded. In the best possible case in this scenario you are looking at a blob of snot. All other instances would be call for alarm. 

What I am suggesting here is that sometimes it's best to just blow your nose and move on. No peeking. 

This is the tack I am trying to generate when it comes to things like the National Rifle Association. I know that this organization exists, much in the way that I know snot exists. I don't need to be a pulmonologist to know that I would rather not have mucus in anything but the tiniest amounts. I have this same feeling about the National Rifle Association. 

And yet, somehow I feel drawn to their gatherings. What sort of twisted and vile reasoning are the most prominent Second Amendment Worshipers clinging to this year? Members of the Grand Old Party, heretofore known as "The Right" showed up in force to promote the case that one of them should be running the country so that all this nonsense about "gun control" could be set aside so that we could get back to the business of saving fetuses so that they could grow up to be innocent third graders killed in an underfunded classroom somewhere. 

Whoops. See what I did there? I started messing with the boogers. I could have just let it stand that there was a convention in Houston and a bunch of guys with red ties showed up. That sort of thing happens all the time. Why should I care? I don't get my tissue in a twist just because the Texas Association of Magicians is gathering there in September. Why should it matter if a bunch of pistol-packing nutjobs are all hanging around together in a conference center deep in the heart of Texas? 

Sorry. "Nutjobs" was perhaps a little overstated, but for those wishing to pander to the heavily armed fringe of America that believes that if God didn't want us to have guns he wouldn't have given us trigger fingers, the National Rifle Association Convention would be where you would want to land. If it was in your campaign's best interest to tell these folks that America didn't have a gun problem, it has a “left-wing crusade to weaponize government against law-abiding citizens.” And if one of those red tie guys just happened to have recently been arrested for lying and cheating, would you still have to pay attention to everything he said? 

Sadly, in my case, that turns out to be true. I kept looking in just to see how awful it could be. Hundreds of dues-paying cult members, waiting to be told that all those dead men, women and children were just part of some evil conspiracy to take away their guns. Another red tie who used to work with that other guy exhorted the crowd: “Stop endangering our lives with gun bans, and stop trampling on the God-given rights of the American people every time tragedy happens.”

So much snot. So little Kleenex. 

Corners

 It has been half a year since my mom died. 

In many ways, it doesn't seem quite real. It is as if I expect I will just go ahead and pick up the phone and she'll be there, wondering why I haven't called for so long. 

But I know why I haven't called. The number that I memorized as a child is no longer working. Those same seven digits, the ones that earned me a little blue telephone key ring has passed into antiquity. The supreme irony of this is probably best exemplified by the fact that mom still occupies the first spot on our speed dial. Who could replace her?

As much as the reality of all of this loss continues to creep into my life in odd bits and pieces, I feel the void each time something mildly monumental occurs and I don't have anyone to call to say, "Did you see..." Of course, it's not like it takes yet another school shooting or Republicans doing something evil. Those are essentially mundane events in our current course of any given week. Back in the day, my mom was good for historical perspective. Her refrain was familiar to many of you who have spent any quality time with her or have read accounts here in this blog: "It's probably going to get worse before it gets better."

Not that she was a pessimist. My mother held out hope for all things and believed that the next best thing was just around the corner. Which is why I continue to anticipate turning around a corner. It's the waiting for the corners to show up that gets really tedious. And frustrating. 

It's been six months since my mom turned her last big corner. While I can say that it wasn't a relief for me, I know it was for her. She had been suffering in lots of different ways, and once she didn't have her own home in which she could take comfort, she was ready to move somewhere that gave her what she was missing. It would be completely unreasonable for me to wish my mother could be hear to listen to my thoughts about drag shows and pitch clocks in Major League Baseball. Which doesn't mean that I am fine with losing my conversation partner. A number of people have suggested that I should take solace in the notion that I can now "call mom" whenever I want to. I appreciate the sentiment, really I do, but as much as I could always anticipate my mother's thoughtful responses, there were surprises.

Surprises around every corner. 

How's It Going?

 There's this Internet game that shows up most often as a meme: How It Started, followed by How It's Going. 

In the past few weeks, a lot of images have come to mind as I consider how to share my thoughts about the very twisted path on which we seem to find ourselves currently. This space is in a near constant state of flux between outrage and appreciation. The easiest example to use would be that of the two expelled Tennessee Representatives. The Justins. When a Republican supermajority sent them packing for carrying a protest against gun violence into the chambers in Nashville. This kind of behavior was not to be tolerated. It took just a few days of collected outrage to get Representatives Jones and Pearson back on the floor, doing the job for which they were elected. One observer commented, "They blew up Krypton, and they didn't expect to make Superman?" However briefly the powers that be felt they would be taking their power away, the Justins will now be super. Without the capes. 

Another way to look at it would be through the Star Wars lens. That tense scene in the hangar of the Death Star where Obi Won Kenobi and Darth Vader are dueling, Obi Won insists,  “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” Then he raises his light saber and Vader takes a big swing, resulting in the disappearance of the old Master's corporeal form, leaving just an empty robe and the hilt of his saber. Now old Ben Kenobi is a Force Ghost and can get around the galaxy without the aid of the Millennium Falcon. He can show up in force-friendly situations whenever he is needed. Like when he tells Luke to run instead of standing around in that hangar waiting for the Stormtroopers' aim to finally correct itself enough to do him in as well. 

The Republicans may have thought that their big swing of expulsion would result in the simple disappearance of the voices of dissent. They made Force Ghosts who will be able to whisper in the ears of the multitude, specifically those students they spoke with before they got kicked out in the first place. Many of whom will be first-time voters in the 2024 election. 

Oops. I wonder if they wish they had just gone ahead and let that protest go without shining a big bright light on it. Now we all know way too much about Tennessee state politics and their gun laws. How's it going, Tennessee Republicans? 

Are You Tired Of Reading About This 2

 A few sharp-eyed social commentators have taken notice of the description of the murderer in the Kentucky bank massacre. Accounts from various media outlets: "Mr. Sturgeon was a University of Alabama graduate who listed his profession as a 'syndications associate and portfolio banker' at Old National Bank on his LinkedIn page. " Or "Sturgeon grew up in southern Indiana, just north of Louisville, according to his mother's Facebook page. The elder of two boys, he attended Floyd Central High School in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, where he ran track and played basketball for the team his father, Todd, coached. He enrolled at the University of Alabama in 2016 as a business student."

Most of these accounts go on to describe how Mister Sturgeon took an AR-15 through the offices of the bank from which he was about to be fired and killed five people, wounded nine. I don't expect this will be reflected on his LinkedIn page, nor will his mother probably post the livestream of his rampage on her Facebook page. 

And of course, friends and neighbors were shocked to discover that their friend/neighbor had committed this atrocity. An associate of the killer, referred to by responsible media as "the suspect," said that Sturgeon had recently mentioned feeling suicidal. Which apparently he was, since he went ahead and saved a bullet for himself.

From a gun that, sing along with me now, "was purchased legally."

Why shouldn't a former track and basketball star, employed at a bank, a portfolio banker and syndication associate be allowed to celebrate his right as an American to own a machine for shredding human beings? The mayor of Louisville, where the bank shooting occurred, found terrible irony in the fact that current state law allows the rifle used to be held for a period, then sold at auction. The one mediating factor would be the removal of the firing pin. It won't be melted down or turned into a garden tool. It will be for sale again. 

Because we do not want anything to stand between us and guns. On the unlikely chance that having a gun in our hand will deflect the bullets coming at us from someone else's gun. If there is any good news it is based in the reactions to the most recent massacres in Kentucky and Tennessee from the governors of those states. Kentucky's Andy Beshear lost a close friend and mentor while Tennessee's Bill Lee was supposed to have dinner the night of the shooting in Nashville with one of the victims. Both seem to have been touched in some way that might strengthen background checks and red flag laws. 

At this point, anything that isn't actively removing voices for common sense gun control from legislative chambers sounds like hope. If that will be our shining light, let it be.