The church was closed, since, as the Emanuel representative who met us outside the door explained, they were still repairing the physical damage done. She was all love and graciousness when accepting the gift and hugged my children, who were with us, before we left. On the way out, my 5-year-old son, Jack, who is obsessed with flowers, asked if he could pick a rose from the memorials lining the front of the church. I had to explain that he couldn't — because they belonged to "someone else," which I quickly amended to, "other people." This was, after all, a mass shooting. I explained that the flowers belonged to the people who were hurt and that they needed to stay at the church to show how sorry we are about, just, everything — but especially racism and gun violence.
Yesterday, July 15, I woke up to the news of a quadruple homicide in our normally sleepy little town of Holly Hill, SC, in which four people were shot to death: Jerome Butler, 50; Krystal Hutto, 28; Shamekia Sanders, 17; and Tamara Perry, 14. A fifth victim, an 8-year-old boy, was also shot but alive and airlifted to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, where we all await news of his condition. That same day, I drove past the house where the shooting happened — right outside town limits and nestled in a grove of pine trees — twice: both going to and coming home from work, with my two children in tow.
Both Charleston and Holly Hill feel like home to us. My husband and I lived in Charleston for years, before moving to Columbia (SC's capital city), and finally settling in Holly Hill — which is basically where your finger lands on a map when you're aiming for halfway between Columbia (where I work) and Charleston (where my husband works).
I did what most people do, I suppose, when they're alerted to the death of someone in their community. I looked them up on Facebook, to see if I recognized them — b/c I'm notoriously bad with names but better with faces. According to Krystal's Facebook page, she worked at The Twirl, an old-fashioned drive-in burger joint the next town over (Eutawville) and one of our favorite local haunts . . .
YES! I saw her picture and remembered talking to her over the Independence Day weekend . . . she was there, selling watermelons she'd harvested, of which I bought two. She was chatty, saying she had picked them that very morning before work. I promised to let her know how they were the next time I visited . . .Or: I thought that must have been her, since she was so similar in appearance to the woman in the Facebook photo. But then I hopped over to The Twirl's Facebook page, planning to leave my condolences, and stumbled upon a statement asserting that Krystal did not work there. So now I'm not sure.
But that's how things are, unfortunately: in America, in 2015, where gun violence is a scourge in cities like Charleston and towns like Holly Hill and every nook&cranny in between.
Families and friends mourn the people who have been shot; and then there are the people like me: walking around my community, unsettled, looking for that blonde women with hazel eyes — relieved if I see her again, at The Twirl or a local produce stand, but sad nonetheless that there is still an irreparable loss, a rift, a vacancy somewhere in this town . . . multiplied x4, b/c again: mass shooting.
In September 2013, Rachel Maddow took us through fifty years of mass shootings in America, starting in 1949. And by "mass," she means at least TWELVE, so neither the Charleston church massacre nor the Holly Hill quadruple homicide would even qualify. Her conclusion is chilling:
All of these are terrible stories taken individually . . . but put them together and remember the first half of that list (that awful list) is scattered across half a century . . . the rest of it (the other half dozen of the worst killings in our history) takes only a half dozen years — from 2007 until now, until today, from Virginia Tech to the Navy Yard: the bloodshed of half a century compressed into this blink of time . . .Last night, I told my husband that I was so sick to death of gun violence, so tired of waiting on government to enact the type of meaningful reform that works so well in other countries (like Canada; and the United Kingdom; and Australia) that I wish I could just do it myself. So, the government can't demand a federal registry? Fine. I'll build one. I'll ask gun owners to send their info to me and would probably get it from the responsible ones.A professor at the University of Maryland first charted this for us after the shooting at Newtown . . . If you look at the way it added up, he said, this was "probably the scariest data" he had ever plotted. And that was before today, when twelve more people were killed . . .
If you thought that Newtown, or Aurora, or Columbine before that was going to lead to meaningful national policy changes to at least try to stop these incidents — if you thought, for example, that they might affect the regulation of firearms and ammunition, maybe even just as they relate to mental illness — you are still waiting for those changes. But if you have been thinking that we live in an era that is more marked by this kind of bloodshed than any era before now, then I am sad to tell you that you are right.
I KNOW! — I said to Scott — I'll model it after those ridiculous virginity pledge cards:A preoccupation with reducing gun violence would, no doubt, be infinitely more useful than a preoccupation with premarital sex . . . which leads me to my final point:I make a commitment, as a gun owner, to God, my family, and my community to be accountable for [list any and all firearm info here], both to store my gun/s responsibly in a locked safe and also to alert authorities if my gun/s are lost or stolen. Signed X
I'm likewise sick to death of the conservative evangelical response to mass shootings (e.g., "See?! God's not happy with us!") which may very well ramp-up since marriage equality has become the law of the land.
Newsflash! There are many countries that have had marriage equality much longer than we have — with much less gun violence to boot.
Saying as ^much^ and more (e.g., that being preoccupied with whom someone loves rather than the fact that we are failing miserably re: the "well-regulated" part of our 2nd Amendment rights and people are dying as a result = morally defunct) has cost me Facebook "friends."
But it's the truth, as is this:
In the time it took me to. write. this. diary, five more people have died in a mass shooting at military facilities in Tennessee. This incident, unlike the previous two, is being considered an act of domestic terrorism, because the shooter is named Mohammad.
Yet all three are equally terror-inducing to the victims, their families, and the survivors. (I think most often of the 5-year-old girl who played dead at Mother Emanuel and the 8-year-old boy who is presently confined to a hospital bed, the only survivor of yesterday's Holly Hill massacre.)
We should do something about all. of. them. Scott isn't keen on my pledge-card idea, because of the whole handing-out-my-address-to-gun-enthusiasts thing (I wrote, here, about the fact that too often those with guns — and no understanding of rhetorical situation — threaten to use them on people with whom they disagree).
I think I shall him ask for tickets to The Brady Campaign and American Public Health Association’s National Summit (October 26-28) instead.