Anger, then relief after son’s deception about music fest

Iwas angry Sunday night. For weeks, my son begged me to let him take one of the family cars to Heron Lake for a camping trip with friends. He wheedled and whined and promised to be safe. To be clear, I take no issue with what a 20-year-old does with friends (mostly). But I have concerns lending a car insured and registered in my name to a 20-year-old who has totaled a couple of his own.

Reluctantly, I gave in.

But Sunday, the alleged last night of my son’s trip, I learned there had been no camping at Heron Lake. My deceptive son had driven my car across state lines to attend a music festival. “Furious,” I texted him. “I’m sorry,” he texted back. “I just knew you wouldn’t understand.” He was right about that. Then came the news that night that a gun-

man on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas had aimed his arsenal of weapons onto a crowd of thousands below. By morning light, we learned the body count — 59 dead, more than 500 wounded, the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

They had been attending a music festival.

As angry as I was with my son, I was so damn grateful that his music festival was in Ohio, not Nevada.

The universe is pretty good at giving perspective, even when it comes in the guise of a punch to the gut.

But we Americans aren’t quite as good at finding perspective on our own when it comes to guns. Mention that four-letter word and the steel-tipped hackles go up between those who support the right to bear arms no matter the cost and those who question the cost of another horrific round of bloodshed by bullet.

So here we are again, back to the carnage that is so uniquely American, back to arguing over whether now is the time to talk about our gun problem, back to debating what the Founding Fathers meant when they penned the Second Amendment, back to slippery slopes and the semantics of whether words like “machine gun” or “terrorist” are appropriately used.

Our lawmakers and leaders offer their thoughts and prayers, take their moments of silence and then go back to being more concerned about their standing with the National Rifle Association.

Our president calls what happened in Las Vegas a “miracle” because of the rapidity with which law enforcement found the gunman dead in his hotel room, never mind that the gunman had already unleashed hundreds of deadly rounds at an estimated rate of 10 shots per second.

You know what the real miracle is? That anybody survived Sunday night.

And then, in a few days — maybe even now as you read this — it’s back to business as usual, back to the back pages, which is to say that 92 or so souls will keep dying daily in America by guns and nothing will have changed. No law, no discussion, no mind.

This is not what I want, of course. I cling to the notion that we are better than this, that surely those who fervently support the right to bear arms can agree that what happened Sunday night should not keep happening, that innocent lives should not be lost so easily.

And then I think of the parents who Sunday night were angry, too, and scared and heartbroken because they had to learn what I didn’t — that their sons and daughters were at that music festival in Las Vegas and didn’t make it out alive.

I was lucky this time. Maybe I won’t be next time. And maybe you won’t, either.