In an emotional moment, Rep. Jared Golden apologized for opposing an assault weapons ban, said he’ll now support one, and asked his community for forgiveness in the wake of the horrific mass shooting in Maine. #BanAssaultWeaponsNow pic.twitter.com/pdXv9ybTXl
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) October 26, 2023
After hearing about the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, the city where he teaches, “I felt, for the first time … that I was part of the reason America is a country where [public spaces] are all too often shooting galleries” @Tyler_A_Harper writes: https://t.co/HtHh4CUgBm
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) October 26, 2023
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In the Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper asks himself “‘How Much Blood Is Your Fun Worth?’”:
… Last night, as I sat on my couch watching CNN anchors discuss a mass shooting that left 18 dead and 13 injured in Lewiston, Maine—the little city where I teach at Bates College and where I lived until recently—I thought about my terrified students who were sheltering in place. About my colleagues who live in town who could have been at the bar or bowling alley where the violence unfolded. About my former neighbors on whose porch my wife and I had spent many evenings drinking wine and talking politics. I thought about the hospital workers who were in the middle of the worst night of their life, and—as the child of a retired police officer—about the sons and daughters and spouses waiting at home while their loved ones ran toward the danger rather than away from it. I thought about all the people waiting for news, or getting news…
… As the night wore on and surreality gave way to cold reality, my grief also slowly gave way to guilt. I felt guilty and complicit and, in some imprecise but unshakable way, culpable for the violence on my television and social-media feeds. I felt, for the first time, like I was part of the reason that mothers have to ask their children for photos of open windows. That I was part of the reason America is a country where college campuses and bars and bowling alleys are all too often shooting galleries. I felt guilty because gun nuts are, whether I like it or not, my people: I grew up in gun country. I spent my teenage years working at a Pennsylvania gun club. I’ve been a gun owner nearly my entire life…
The honest truth is that I have always viewed the gun-violence epidemic—and my relationship to it as a gun owner—as an abstraction, remote from my own life or choices. Like many gun owners, I had always supported stronger gun control. If it requires written and practical exams and dozens of hours of training to earn the right to drive a motor vehicle, I have never understood why the same should not apply to firearms. But my views on gun control have also been wonkish, academic in nature: It is something I care about and have written about but have never felt deeply. That changed yesterday as I found myself racking my brain, wondering if I had ever heard my students or colleagues or friends or neighbors mention Schemengees Bar & Grille. Wondering if someone I knew could have been there. Wondering if I was going to get The Call or The Text or The Email.
Today, as my wife and I stay locked in our home—the gunman, still on the loose, is the subject of a sprawling manhunt—I am filled with nothing so much as rage. Rage at my gun-nut friends from home who will see this tragedy as a reason for less gun control, rather than more of it. Rage at every conservative pundit who has ever uttered the phrase “good guy with a gun.” Rage at the state of Maine, which has some of the most lax gun laws in the country. Rage at the politicians here and beyond who have refused to solve a problem for which solutions readily exist. Rage at myself for being so blind.
If you had asked me before yesterday why I own guns, I would have fed you the same line I had fed my liberal friends and my wife—and, above all, myself—for years. I would have told you that I own guns for hunting, for protection, for blasting clay pigeons out of cloudless October skies. I would have told you that I own guns because I come from a gun family and guns are some of the only things I have left from people I have loved. I would have told you about the rifle that my holler-born, Great Depression–surviving grandmother kept under the bed, the 20-gauge my grandfather used to bring home Thanksgiving turkeys, the 30-06 that took my father’s first deer. I would have told you I own guns because I am a hunter and I own guns because I write things that sometimes make people angry.
Excellent Question: <em>How Much Blood Is Your Fun Worth?</em>Post + Comments (94)
