While our dogs and cats hid under beds or looked for the comfort of their owners’ arms or donned thunder jackets, life and death continued in the streets where we live. Yesterday was the Fourth of July, and the smell of burning barbecue and the glee and laughter of children at every fireworks pop and color shower was spoiled in cities like yours and mine by another mass shooting. In Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Texas, and Baltimore, Maryland—as of this writing—10 have been killed and at least 38 wounded in mass shootings since Sunday. My youngest sister lives in Washington, DC. She lost a young man she raised from a toddler to gun violence Saturday. A week ago, a neighbor was shot in the leg; three weeks ago, another neighbor’s 12-year-old was shot to death.
America’s streets are dangerous because guns are so readily available. Every minor infraction is met with a gun as a solution. A perceived threatening glance, fights between teens, and public humiliation are ending with the nightmare of muzzle flash and death. Trying hard not to sound like the old codger I am, teens of my youth had fistfights, shook hands, and gave the nod to the best man or boy that night. As for the shooting in Philadelphia, the right wing will take the emphasis away from the semi-automatic rifle the killer used to take the lives of a 15-year-old and four others and make the sexual identity of the shooter the story.
What little we know about the shooter, Kimbrady Carriker, was what the news reports have revealed, calling the shooter a 40-year-old male. All the local photographs of the killer have shown “him” in female dress and makeup. Whether Carriker lives as a woman has yet to be determined. However, Carriker’s mere appearance will undoubtedly become anti-trans fodder for right-wingers, mainly as a diversion against the real culprit, guns. This is not to say that the ultimate desire and decision to kill does not lie with the spate of mass shooters the country suffers, but the ease at which America provides the tools—for mass destruction—is inexcusable.
Living in a big city neighborhood, you become inured to fire trucks and ambulance sirens; even the occasional pop of gunfire becomes just another routine city sound. When it comes close, as with a friend, neighbor, or relative, the stunning abnormality of gunfire shocks you back to remember when that was not normal.
So as my sister prepares for a funeral, my neighbor lives with the memories of burying her young son, and my friend awaits the return of his wounded roommate, I wonder why we cannot do better. As a child, I thought it was strange for my elderly great-grandmother to check the obituary in the morning papers for the names of her friends. Now I understand. If you live in any town in America, the news starts with its own form of an obituary, when and where the last mass shooting was, and, like my great-grandmother searching for names, are they familiar?
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