My heart broke twice over the weekend, once on Saturday morning, and then again on Sunday morning when I awoke and turned on the television. It broke for the senseless killings in El Paso, and then it broke again for the gratuitous piling on in Dayton on Saturday night. It didn’t break just for the victims. Nor for their griveing families, not just for their friends. It broke for El Paso and Dayton themselves.
Because, it’s different, you see? It’s different when it happens to you. And I should know, Las Vegas is my adopted home, and has been for almost fifteen years. And as we speak, Las Vegas is the undisputed heavyweight champion when it comes to mass murder in the United States. But the truly sick and sad part of that is that, as any athlete will tell you, records are meant to be broken. And the way that things are going right now, I truly fear that we may not hold the title for much longer, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
It’s different. From the first “Breaking News” banner, it’s different. Because it’s you, it’s home. And even if you’ve never actually been in that specific location, you have almost certainly driven or walked by it, and since mass shootings seem to center almost exclusively in densely populated “soft target” areas, you sure as hell know where it is. And since, while the scene is still “active,” and for hours afterward, no camera crews are allowed anywhere near the scene, the reporters are standing somewhere as close by as possible, with places you sure as hell have eaten in, or shopped at, right over their shoulder, and that brings is home in a way nothing else can, not even close.
It’s different because it’s awkward. And awkwardness brings guilt. It’s awkward because, while you may not have known a single victim, they were your neighbors. You can’t help but ask yourself, “She looks vaguely familiar. Did I ever pass her somewhere, and think ‘God, she’s cute!'” Or “Hey! Didn’t I see that guy in the Smith’s a couple of times?” And it’s awkward because, as nice and lovely as “thoughts and prayers” sounds, “thoughts and prayers” don’t even bring a casserole to the post funeral pot luck. And when it comes out of the mouths of smarmy, uncaring politicians who helped to create and nurture the environment that spawned this senseless act in the first place, you just want to scream And there’s guilt because, no matter who you are, and no matter how caring and sensitive you are, the thought, “There but for the grace of God go I” is never far from your mind as the new coverage plays out around you.
It’s different because it never seems to end. Long after the network reporters have pulled up stakes to go off and cover some other, hopefully less deadly news event, you’re still turning on the TV every night to the words and images of more people being laid to rest. And if you happen to turn right off on Sunset and onto Las Vegas Boulevard South, your eyes sure aren’t going to miss those 59 white crosses, stretching out from the iconic Welcome to Las Vegas sign on the center median. And you’ll never look at the Mandalay Bay quite the same way again.
And it’s different because of the fear. From the moment that the television speaker emits whatever catchy sound the networks use to signify “Breaking News,” and from the moment you hear ‘We’re getting reports of a mass shooting in,” your heart drops into the pit of your stomach. Because your town, your world, is no longer the safe haven that it was. And when you hear the words “mass shooting,” the words that immediately spring to your own mind are Sweet Jesus, not US again! We know that here in Vegas, because it wasn’t all that long before the music festival shooting that a mentally ill woman, with her toddler in the back seat, jumped the curb and rammed up the Strip at speeds up to 45 miles an hour, before turning into a hotel parking lot on a side street, and waiting placidly to be arrested. If it happens once, it can happen again. Anywhere, and anytime. While you helplessly wait.
And so, on Saturday, to paraphrase Die Hard, El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio joined the growing list of American cities whose only membership requirement is to have suffered a mass killing. It will happen again, maybe this time where you live. How many more times Lord, how many? But please, no more school children.
Makes me think of a workplace shooting that happened my way a few years back. Wasn’t a mass event, just the usual sorry, ugly story of a disgruntled ex-employee coming back to kill the people he blamed–two of them–before taking his own life. It was right next to the local high school, which went on lockdown for hours. My mom called me up to see if I was safe because I sometimes walk past there. It was an unsettling thing to deal with. I’m surprised that there haven’t been repeats since.
Is that the one not that far from my old neck of the woods in Illinois a couple of months in a factory in the Chicago suburbs???
Much further south, Murf, in east TN right between Knoxville and Chattanooga. But it WAS a factory.
Oh, OK…I just guessed that because it wasn’t that long ago that there was a workplace shooting in I think it was Aurora Illinois, west of Chicago, an the factory there was only like a block or so from a school, and within a mile of multiple schools, all of which course went immediately into lock down…
Isn’t it a goddamn shame that there have been so many of these shootings that the details for one can be identical to another THAT far away?
Before we lost the tv reception last night (yay we got rain in Tucson!), my heart sunk when I heard a young man (probably early to mid 20s) in El Paso say that now he really is an American because his family has lived through a mass shooting. FFS, this is what our country has become to their generation, a mass shooting gallery.