It could have been Picklesburgh
Monday was another busy day for your ever- diligent airport TSA agents, who not only found a loaded handgun in a carry- on bag at Pittsburgh International Airport ( the second this month), but discovered a missile launcher in checked baggage at Baltimore- Washington International.
If Monday was a typical day at the nation’s airports — about a dozen firearms got pulled out of carry- ons around the country — and if 2019 matches 2018 in terms of airport gun packing, more than 4,000 firearms will be found in the possession of the flying public, 86% of which will be loaded, and 34% of those will have a bullet in the chamber.
( For you beach- going vacationers, the TSA reminds you that harpoons and spear guns are not allowed in carry- on baggage, but are good to go in checked baggage. Also, leave your grenades at home. An inert one was found at Pittsburgh International on July 16).
No wonder people need comfort animals.
But Monday was not a terribly busy day on the national outrage stage, the one metaphorical left standing after they dismantled the scene Sunday of the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California, where a 6- year- old boy, a 13- year- old girl and a man in his 20s were killed among the 18 people blasted in America’s latest high- profile spray of bullets.
Pity of it is, it felt overdue.
The outrage was typical but relatively muted this time. Thoughts and prayers, of course. Always. Outrage didn’t quite rise to the level where the president and the vice president felt compelled to give a speech to the National Rifle Association, even just to remind it that another $ 30 million for the next election
cycle sure would come in handy.
Still, the most useless observation this time around came from Nancy Pelosi, and it was an oldie but a goodie:
“Enough is enough.” Seriously, Madam Speaker?
This is America, where enough is never enough. We’re nowhere close to being done shooting each other.
This latest misadventure of the well- regulated militia brought a typical dose of carnage to that idyllic American phenomenon, the summer festival. Could just as easily have been Picklesburgh, which landed on the same weekend on the other side of the country.
In an America where kids are now telling people they’re afraid they might go to school and not come home, 6- year- old Stephen Romero didn’t even get the chance this year. He’d celebrated his birthday this summer at Legoland, which didn’t have an active shooter that day, but he didn’t survive the Garlic Festival.
In America, in 2019, three people did not survive the Gilroy Garlic Festival.
I’ve written this column too many times, starting with Columbine. Columbine was 20 years ago. What has changed? We’ve got more guns. Why? Safety, of course. Gotta be safe out there.
If guns made people safer, this would be the safest country in the history of the world. Hint: It ain’t.
Blame whomever you want. The people who can make a difference have heard it all before. But on some level, you get the country you deserve, don’t you?
You know and I know, and most of all the gun dealers know, that the Gilroy Garlic Festival won’t last two full news cycles. Before noon Monday, about 18 hours after the shooting, none of the six featured news stories that are always on the Yahoo home page feature were about that. Something about a cake J- Lo presented to A- Rod, something about a tropical storm, something about the Pink Lady Bandit, two stories about Democratic candidates in an election that’s now just a little more than 15 months away and a story about a record- breaking swimmer.
There are few other viable conclusions then, that again, on some level, we’re OK with this.
We were OK with an entire classroom of 6- year- olds in Newtown, Conn., not making it to Christmas in 2012. Yes, there were protests, candlelight vigils. Even a year later, there was a beautiful ceremony for those children at Heinz Chapel on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh. But outrage fades, no matter how horrible the violence gets, no matter how young or how innocent the victims are.
There are thousands of Americans fighting daily, courageously, to end their country’s pathology of gun violence. It’s not enough. It never is. It never changes.
In San Juan, in Hong Kong, in Moscow this month, people who had clearly had enough of what their governments were doing or not doing took their message to the streets. Some were successful. Some got arrested. Some got bludgeoned, then arrested.
Not here. We talk. We bloviate. We scream at each other on cable TV. We defend the Second Amendment.
When my kids grew to driving age, the thing I’d always say when they left the house was, “Drive perfectly.”
Now I say nothing. But what I think is, “Try not to get shot.”