Lone Star College–North Harris Greenspoint Center Joe A. Airola Building (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
On Jan. 22, 2013, at Lone Star College in Houston, three people wound up with bullets ripping into their skin after an altercation between two of them ended in a gun fight. A third was shot in the crossfire.
I’ll acknowledge a silver lining to this story: This wasn’t the sort of mass shooting where a gunman ruthlessly hunted for his random victims – other than the two armed individuals opposing each other, only one other person was shot in the crossfire. And as far as latest reports show, the injuries were not fatal.
So perhaps “shooting” isn’t necessarily accurate. Sounds more like a “shootout.”
But don’t expect me to suddenly support concealed carry on school campuses or other such public places. Maybe I am just very stubborn and set in my ways and I just don’t “get it,” whatever there is to get.
But even as I understand that this was not nearly as bad as some other recent and not-so-recent events, it still illustrates the grim reality of the danger of crossfire to bystanders between two or more opposing individuals with guns.
After the Sandy Hook shooting, the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre called for more guns in schools because, as he said, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” (Before, you know, ranting against the media for allegedly vilifying his lobbying organization.)
So which of these two was the good guy and which was the bad guy? Or, perhaps given that they were willing to escalate their altercation into a shootout, both were bad guys and there was a lack of a third shooter acting as a good guy? And, you know, the risk posed to people around them of being injured by crossfire which is a realistic danger. Would a third armed person have helped, sending more bullets flying?
Call me stubborn, but I just am not convinced.
In August 2012, a gunman shot and killed a former co-worker just outside the Empire State Building in New York. Police arrived and wound up firing a total of 16 rounds, killing the assassin but also in the process injuring several bystanders – six were hit indirectly by ricocheting bullets or debris, but three were hit by direct gunfire from the police (the gunman pointed his weapon at them but did not actually shoot at that point).
Accidents happen. There can be collateral damage. Crossfire can and does happen with law enforcement involved; and it can and does happen with your average armed civilian, as well.
It’s a legitimate issue to consider before we heed the NRA’s calls criticizing gun-free zones in places like schools that, is implied, prevent “good guys” from stopping “bad guys.” Keep in mind that when such events like a mass shooting (or even a shootout like that at the college today) occur so suddenly, things happen quickly and you have to think quickly if you’re in and around the epicenter of that action. Someone shooting, people screaming, falling, running, crying out, panicking… there is chaos and even just a minute-long standoff can, to people fearing for their lives, feel like an eternity.
We can play the “what-if” game with just about any scenario and plug in any variables we want, but I just don’t think that the mere presence and action of a “good guy with a gun” would necessarily be able to reduce the kill or injury count caused by the “bad guy with a gun.” Maybe he’s not the only “good guy” in the crowd; another “good guy” seeing a new person raise another weapon, in the confusion and chaos, might easily mistake them for a partner-in-crime and in turn pull their gun on the first “good guy.” Which would just escalate further an already-dangerous standoff.
Again, I realize that at least this wasn’t a gunman or pair of gunmen bent on killing as many people as he/they could – they were only out to get each other. And that may also be one of the things contributing to the fact that the gunshot wounds were not fatal. So, again, I get it. It “wasn’t as big a deal” as Sandy Hook or Aurora or Columbine. (Sidebar: how sad that these names are now forever etched in my memory as synonyms for mass murder, as if what they were before – an elementary school, a local movie theater, a high school – never existed?)
But crossfire just illustrates the point I’m belaboring here: eliminating gun-free zones and flooding schools and other places with guns for staff simply does not guarantee public safety. Columbine High School had an armed police school resource officer on campus when the massacre began. His actions to try and stop the shooters from pursuing further their plan are courageous and heroic, and he stepped up to the call of duty – and yes, the time and bullets the gunmen expended during the shootout with the guard may well have otherwise been spent killing more students and teachers. But unfortunately, it was not enough – it did not stop the massacre from continuing.
So to think that Mr. LaPierre’s “good guy stops bad guy” formula is panacea is just as naive and ignorant as it is to think that if nobody had any guns at all, the world would be sunshine and rainbows.
There are no simple solutions. But you just can’t act like crossfire doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter. If crossfire doesn’t matter, then why include kids who were sitting on their porches minding their own business when they were shot and killed in Chicago’s depressingly-high gun homicide statistics at all? Maybe it’s because, well, they do matter. I think we can all agree on that one.
I don’t write about every incident of gun violence, and yes, perhaps I am writing about this incident just to prove a point. And, yes, I am in favor of gun control, so I do have biases. But I want to also point out that I don’t choose which gun-related incident to blog about simply out of some cold-hearted “the others just aren’t that important” mentality. A monster, I am not.
But if I were to blog about every shooting that happened, I might as well re-dedicate this blog as an almanac to these incidents, because they happen nationwide every day. The media doesn’t report on every shooting because, well, sadly, there are so many that you have to cherry-pick – if it happened in your readership area and you’re a smaller community outlet, you’ll have some news about it, but otherwise, it must be an event of greater magnitude like Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora or Sandy Hook to get days of nationwide breaking news coverage and follow-up reporting and analysis.
For the record, Lone Star College is a gun-free zone, but its school code does not spell out whether or how people with concealed carry licenses carrying guns onto the campus would be punished. It’s pretty vague in that regard.
And, looking forward, the gun debate continues nationwide, especially after President Obama’s recent push. And state lawmakers in Texas and Arkansas have filed to allow concealed carry on public college campuses. Yay? I’m not so sure. But that’s just me.
