I was in my home office a few days ago when a strange car pulled into my driveway. As I was wondering who it was and what they wanted, the car immediately pulled away and returned in the direction from which it came. It seemed the person was just using my driveway as a U-turn.
Quickly, I realized that I’ve done something similar a few times when I’d turned into the wrong street or passed a house I was going for the first time and needed to turn around. Then suddenly, it dawned on me that this behavior could be deadly.
It has been dangerous as recent experiences can testify.
On April 18 - just a couple of days before my experience - in upstate New York, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was shot and killed after the car in which she was riding accidentally pulled into the wrong driveway. The group of friends in the car were going to a party and did not even get out of the vehicle. Realizing they were at the wrong address, the group started to back out of the driveway when the resident fired two shots from his porch, striking Gillis in the neck.
Five days before that in Kansas City, Missouri, Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old teenager, was shot twice by a man after ringing the man’s doorbell. Yarl had mistakenly rang the doorbell to 84-year-old Andrew Lester’s home believing it was where his two younger brothers were visiting a friend. He was there to pick them up. Instead, he was shot twice without being given the chance to explain why he was there. Luckily, he survived.
That week from hell wasn’t done as another man in Texas shot and injured two cheerleaders, Payton Washington and Heather Roth, after one of them almost got into his parked car by mistake. This happened just a couple of days after Gillis was killed.
During the previous day, a six-year-old girl and her parents were shot by a neighbor after a basketball that the child was playing with rolled into the attacker’s yard. Witnesses said the man ran out of his home upset about the ball’s intrusion into his yard and started firing a gun at the little girl who was trying to retrieve her ball.
As I looked back at each of these incidents, I couldn’t help but imagine what was going on in the heads of each of these shooters. None of the people they shot posed any immediate risk or danger to them. When did we become a nation of shoot first and ask questions later?
I usually try to steer clear of topics that could be seen as political in this newsletter. But then, it seems that virtually everything is political these days, especially in the United States. So, I’m diving headlong into this even though I realize that my head could get chopped off in the process. To be clear, I’m neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but I’m sure that won’t dissuade someone who is bent on seeing this as a political issue.
I can’t help but wonder what it would take for our lawmakers to pass a gun safety reform. Almost every single day, this issue of gun safety is thrust to the fore because of incidences such as these, where people with guns discharge their firearms in situations that are not necessary.
With a new incident, there’s usually an immediate outcry but it’s soon forgotten until the next incident or mass shooting. Meanwhile, innocent people are either dying or being maimed almost daily.
When it’s easy for anyone to get a gun, including people who are neither mentally stable nor emotionally mature, we’ve got a real problem. Unfortunately, those with the power to do something about this, lack the moral fortitude to take action because of fear.
I read in an article last week that Switzerland has a very high rate of gun ownership, yet the country has not had a mass shooting in more than 20 years. In the United States, unnecessary shooting is almost a daily occurrence.
The Swiss have very strict rules about who can own a gun and what type of training is needed to possess one. They have laws designed to prevent anyone who’s incompetent or has violent tendencies from owning a gun.
In the United States, we’re supposed to have one of the world’s best and brightest minds but it seems our stupidity, ignorance, and impotency know no bounds, especially in this area. We’re not willing to do the right thing for the fear of a few interest groups. We major in minor issues and gloss over serious situations that are taking the lives of innocent people.
We're in self-destruct mode and we don’t seem to realize it. I can only hope that our leaders wise up soon and do the right thing.
I just wonder what it will take for that to happen.