Execrable Guns

Copyright © 2001 by Dave Badtke

Our younger son, Joe, is in Rome for a semester, studying Latin and Italian. He spent the month of December with friends in Paris before travelling by train to Italy. He called us one night in early January from a pay phone outside his apartment in Paris. My wife and I called him back. It was maybe 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning in Paris. There was no sound other than his voice, there being no traffic on the narrow street fronting his apartment. We talked about the French, about his museum trips. We talked vacation smalltalk. He sounded congested. We asked him if he had a cold. He said that he did and that the weather was terrible. He seemed down. He finally said that he had bad news. He said this not as an afterthought, as though he had just remembered something, but as an endthought, as though what he was going to tell us would be hard for him and us to bear.

Your heart stops when your child says certain things, makes certain sounds, expresses himself in certain ways that foreshadow catastrophic changes that will forever alter his and your life. In the brief second before I said, “What is it?” I imagined the worst—illness, accident, unspeakable horrors—though at least I’m talking to him, I thought. I’m not talking to someone else who’s talking about him.

I felt shamefully relieved when Joe told me a friend of his had been killed. But nothing happened to you? I said. No, nothing had happened to him; he was okay; but a woman he had gone out with a few times at Haverford College, a woman whom he had known and liked, a friend of his, had been shot and killed in Nevada City. That had happened to her. That had happened to him.

Laura Wilcox, 19, a sophomore at Haverford, was working during the Christmas break at a Nevada City county health clinic. On January 10, Scott H. Thorpe allegedly entered the clinic and shot a 9mm Ruger semiautomatic pistol repeatedly—ten times—killing Laura and Pearlie Mae Feldman, 68, and wounding another. Thorpe then drove to a Lyon’s Restaurant in Grass Valley where he again fired the Ruger repeatedly—10 times—killing Mike Markle, 24, father of a young child, and wounding another. The 9mm Ruger has a 20-round clip. Thorpe had emptied the clip at two locations, killing three, wounding two. I suppose we should be thankful he didn’t have more clips.

Laura Wilcox’s parents received a call or someone came to see them, and they could tell as soon as they heard the voice or saw the face that something terrible had happened. They too must have thought, for the second before they said, “What is it?”, of unspeakable horrors, of terrible things they hoped wouldn’t be true. But what they imagined could not have begun to prepare them for what had happened. Their daughter was dead. A troubled loner, who used to be a janitor, who had previously been arrested only once, in 1988, for DUI, who lived on an 11-acre farm, who had a fascination with guns, shot their daughter multiple times. Laura was looking forward to being with her friends, going back to school, maybe going on to law school, and just like that—pull the trigger—pop—pop—pop—she was dead.

What is wrong with us that we allow this terrible scene to be replayed again and again in our society? Why did this man have a gun? Why do we allow our citizens to carry weapons of destruction, terrible power toys, glorified in the media, that can be used to kill another human being from a distance? With a simple trigger pull, a person who has a fascination with guns can become a killer because he wasn’t treated right; he doesn’t like his wife, doctor or coworker; he has an upset stomach; he’s having a bad day. After it’s over, we take great pride in our law enforcement institutions which are ready and eager to prosecute the killer to the full extent of the law. We’ll lock him up: We’ll execute him: We’ll be tough on criminals, we’ll say.

But criminals become criminals by committing crimes, and if a person’s first crime is to pull a trigger, killing the Wilcox’s daughter or your son, daughter, wife, family member, friend, stranger, then it’s too late for the victim and all the victim’s family and friends. The deed is done and prosecution won’t bring back the dead. Prosecuting those whose first crime is killing with a gun won’t keep the person ravaged by the bullet from dying.

Ridiculous, paranoid rhetoric, blind 2nd-Amendment fealty, self-serving arguments that gun deaths are a price we pay for freedom are ideas that we must move beyond if we are to be civilized. If you own a gun, either get rid of it or be the first to advocate controls that make ours a saner, more compassionate society. For Laura Wilcox and her family, for all whom you love and hold dear, take some action to stop the killing.”

 - Dave Badtke can be contacted at: www.CarquinezReview.com; Dave@Badtke.com; PO Box 763, Benicia, CA 94510; or by calling 707-745-5540.

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