Some things grow old fast.
Calling or texting to check if people I care about who live or work close to the scene of a mass shooting are safe now is at the top of that list.
On July 4, I was spending time with my aged mother when the news alerts flashed that a gunman had opened fire at an Independence Day celebration in Highland Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
Horrified, I realized two couples I know — former students and now dear friends — live not far from there. I grabbed my phone and pounded out a text asking if everyone was safe.
The responses came soon.
They all were okay, thank God. They hadn’t been near the carnage in which seven people died and another 46 were either wounded or injured.
But one of my friends knew people who were at the July 4 celebration, co-workers who went to enjoy America’s birthday and instead found themselves in something resembling a war zone. They were shaken right down to their cores and likely will live with the hell they’ve experienced for some time.
As will all the other people caught up in that horror.
Just days later, on a pleasant Sunday, my phone exploded again with alerts that another gunman had opened fire at the Greenwood Park Mall.
Another former student, a bright young woman, works at that mall, saving money for a soon-to-begin adventure in which she will study and teach overseas.
Again, I sent off a worried text.
And, again, thank God, she was all right.
Three other people died and another two were wounded.
In the aftermath of the shooting, the usual questions were asked.
What was the gunman’s motivation? Was he targeting anyone in particular? Were there any signs that he was planning to commit mass murder?
Most of the questions were variations of the same plaintive cry.
Why?
Gun-rights activists didn’t waste time on questions. They focused on the fact that an armed civilian — they called him a “Good Samaritan” — shot the gunman dead before the death count climbed even higher.
The fact that they called him a Good Samaritan indicates they don’t know the Bible as well as they think they do. The Good Samaritan offered comfort and succor to a Jew who had been beaten and robbed after a Jewish priest and a Levite had ignored the wounded man’s suffering. The Good Samaritan offered aid even though the Jews and the Samaritans despised each other.
It is a story that seeks to remind us of our common humanity and the importance of compassion — and, implicitly, of the horror violence visits on human beings.
The young man who killed the gunman was many things — courageous, quick-thinking and a hero. I am glad and grateful that he stopped still more tragedy from occurring.
But he wasn’t the Good Samaritan.
And the fact that he was one of the few “good guys with a gun” the firearms lobby loves to tout who managed to stop still more murders from taking place shouldn’t blind us to the fact that three innocent people died before he did the stopping. We shouldn’t ignore that such deadly violence has become far too common in our beloved country.
The truth is that a civilian is able to use a firearm to save himself or herself or others once in every 40 times a gun is used in a violent encounter. That’s 2.5% of the time.
But faith in this fractional fantasy now drives our gun laws.
And those lax gun laws bring the murder, the mayhem and the suffering ever closer to our doorsteps, to our homes and to people we care about. The circle of Americans whose lives have been touched by gun violence, many horribly, grows wider every day.
Not long after I received the text from my former student who works at the Greenwood Park Mall that she was safe, one more news alert popped up on my phone.
This one said there was another shooting involving several people, this one in Beech Grove.
It was in a park not far from where both my children once traveled to play softball and baseball games.
