More Sadness

Love, True Love
Originally uploaded by kmevans

Well, Happy Valentine's Day, My sweetie got me the beautiful rose you see here (a dozen of them) along with a teddy bear, chocolates and a balloon.

My mom called me this evening to see if I had seen the news about the shootings at Northern Illinois University. I had heard it on the way home. She wanted me to reassure her that I was safe. You see, I work at a University myself and with all the school and college shootings lately she has become concerned. Well, I think she has a right to be. 32 at Virginia Tech, 2 in Louisiana last week, now 16 in Illinois, I wonder about safety myself. But as I told my mom there is not a lot we can do, it would be virtually impossible to secure every building on every campus from this type of attack. Its so damn random.

I work with college students everyday and I know how unstable they are, hell its the most traumatic time of their life for the most of them and they are not equipped to handle it. If I had a dollar for every college student that's cried in my office I'd be a bit closer to retirement. You never know what to expect from them from one day to the next.

One of my jobs is being the admin of our emergency text message system. The software that we put in place after Va.Tech so that if there is a shooter on campus we can send a text message out to anyone subscribed and tell them what to do. Its scary to have to think about this kind of thing on a regular basis, and not only think about it but plan for it. And most of all to know no matter how much you plan or how what systems you put in place that if something like this occurs, its never going to be enough.

My heart goes out to those at NIU.

School Shootings By State (data from Wikipedia)

Kirkwood

Kirkwood
Originally uploaded by kmevans

Kirkwood, Missouri is a beautiful little place. I worked there for several years and now live about 5 miles west and work about 3 miles east. There are quaint little shops such as "The Bug Store", great restaurants and a farmers market in the summer. Last Thursday evening, 2/7/08, an irate citizen entered the council meeting at city hall and killed 5 people and wounded 2 more before he was gunned down by police. The stories are all over the news so I won't rehash it here.

I just wanted to comment on how disturbed I am by our country right now, and by people in general.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Ben Gordon, a black man from Webster Groves, said, "To me, Cookie Thornton is a hero. He was an athlete... He opened a business. He went to court, but the system failed him... We are sorry, we grieve, but (Kirkwood officials) share in this responsibility."

What??? Hero? How can someone possibly say that? How does killing innocent people make someone a hero? If I put away that logical part of my mind maybe these people think that he was defending his right to free speech. Okay, sure, you have a right to free speech, you don't have a right to kill someone if you don't think you got that right.

This man had managed to get himself banned from city council meetings for his behavior, then lost a lawsuit that he filed to be allowed back at the meetings. What is the next step? Go to the papers? File an appeal? No! Get your gun and SHOOT EVERYONE! Sure, that makes sense.

This is why it should be a hell of a lot more difficult to own a gun in this country.

2/8/08
Two women shot at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge, La

2/7/08
5 people killed at city council meeting in Kirkwood, Mo

2/7/08
5 people dead in a LA shootout

2/3/08
5 women killed in a Chicago Lane Bryant clothing store

That's less than one week, and 17 people are shot and killed across the country.

I'm sad and I'm scared. I believe in the principles on which this country was founded, freedom, of religion, of speech, of the pursuit of happiness. I don't believe that this gives anyone a right to harm anyone else or have the free means to harm anyone else so easily.

Some statistics:
"In the U.S. for 2001, there were 29,573 deaths from firearms, distributed as follows by mode of death: Suicide 16,869; Homicide 11,348; Accident 802; Legal Intervention 323; Undetermined 231.(CDC, 2004)"

"The number of non-fatal injuries is considerable--over 200,000 per year in the U.S. Many of these injuries require hospitalization and trauma care. A 1994 study revealed the cost per injury requiring admission to a trauma center was over $14,000. The cumulative lifetime cost in 1985 for gunshot wounds was estimated to be $911 million, with $13.4 billion in lost productivity. (Mock et al, 1994)"

I don't believe in keeping a gun in your home for any reason. I don't believe in the society that we live in today that there is a need for guns. Media, video games, movies and music all sensationalize guns and violence rather than vilifying them.

My dad was shot and killed by a "bad guy" for doing no more than being a friendly guy when I was five years old. Does that color my opinion of this subject? Of course it does. But I think it also underscores my point. For every gun death in this country there is a ripple effect that never stops. It does not have to be a Virginia Tech or a Columbine for it to make an impact, the impact is there you just have to open your eyes to it