Shootings common, as is lack of protection

I’ve looked at websites around the internet and could find no one who said that the gunman who on Monday killed three Michigan State University students and wounded five others before killing himself had “gone postal.” Apparently, that’s no longer a thing. I’d guess there is at least one generation, perhaps two, who may not even understand the reference. That’s how far down the purgatory road of mass shootings we have traveled.

I was there, in a way, after some of the first bloody footsteps.

On Aug. 20, 1986, a 44-year-old mail carrier named Patrick H. Sherrill walked into the post office where he worked in Edmond, Okla., and opened fire with a couple of handguns, killing 14 coworkers and wounding six others. He then killed himself.

It was such an unheard of atrocity that I was immediately dispatched to the scene, along with journalists from all over the country. Variations on the phrase “going postal” oozed their way into the vernacular.

What happened in Edmond that awful day, and what followed, also became the prototype for how we react to gun massacres. And it’s useful, since so many of them followed.

You know how it works.

First, we express shock. Then we collect details of the event. We investigate the shooter. We tell the stories of heroic first responders. We honor the victims. Then we tell ourselves something must be done.

But not too soon.

Politicians in the pocket of the gun lobby say we must not act in haste. They say we must not be driven to action by an emotional response to the killings. They tell us we must give ourselves time to mourn. To grieve.

By which they mean time ... to forget.

And we always do.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said of the shooting at Michigan State University, “We know this is a uniquely American problem.” She pointed out that Tuesday was the five-year anni

So, no one “goes postal” anymore. Our numerous mass killers have come in all shapes and sizes, ages and professions, while the lack of protection from gun violence has remained the same.

versary of the shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., during which a gunman killed 17 people.

I didn’t remember that Tuesday was the anniversary. Did you?

There are so, so many.

In late April of 1999, I was sent by The Arizona Republic to Littleton, Colo. Dozens of other journalists were already there. Hundreds.

A few days earlier two armed young men, one 18 and one 17, walked into Columbine High School and opened fire, killing 12 students and a teacher and wounding more than 20 others.

I stuck around when the National Rifle

Association decided that, not many days after the killings, it was going ahead with its planned convention in nearby Denver. Thousands of protesters turned up, demanding national action on gun violence.

At the convention, the late actor and NRA president Charlton Heston told a cheering crowd, “Each horrible act can’t become an ax for opportunists to cleave the very Bill of Rights that binds us.” He need not have worried.

According to the Gun Violence Archive

there were 647 mass shootings just last year, part of a 12-month period when gun deaths of all manner totaled 44,307, close to what it would mean if the entire population of Prescott was wiped out.

As for Patrick Sherrill’s murderous rampage in Edmond, Okla., all those years ago, it has dropped all the way down to a 12th place tie on the list of deadliest mass shootings in the U.S. Imagine that.

So, no one “goes

postal” anymore.

Our numerous mass killers have come in all shapes and sizes, ages and professions, while the lack of protection from gun violence has remained the same.

Not that we haven’t learned a few things.

When I first got to Edmond a few days after the post office shooting I stopped at the local flower shop, thinking I might leave a bouquet outside the post office, where there already was a considerable makeshift memorial.

“I’m sorry but we’re temporarily out,“the shop owner told me, adding that since “the event” every florist for miles around had been inundated with orders.

In those days, no one could not have foreseen the demand.

Now, we can.