As American as Apple Pie

 Living in the US mass shootings don't come as a surprise anymore, but seeing the town where I lived from 1978-1986 on the news as the scene of the latest massacre had an unreal feeling to it. As the story unfolded I noticed the building where the shooter positioned himself on the roof was where I had an apartment in my last few months of living in town, above a shop. He must have climbed the fire escape I thought (later confirmed by the sheriff in a press conference where he described it as a, "Ladder affixed to the building" because he's apparently never seen a fire escape) a visual image still in my mind after all these decades. It would have been very easy to disappear down the alley, which we now know is what happened. It was the shittiest of shitty studio apartments with a murphy bed, a strange bathroom with a sunken tub the shape of an inverted ziggurat where you could sit at the edge and soak your feet, but little else, and generations of bugs that all came out to say hello when I'd arrive home and turn on the lights. I won't go as far as to say it was the sort of spot where no one would notice you climbing a fire escape with an assault rifle, because I have no idea what the apartments are like now in 2022, but in 1986, absolutely. It was/is an affluent town, but the working class had to live somewhere, and in my case it was the shitty apartment above the store.

I have to admit that I absolutely hated living in Highland Park. I've been back once, in 36 years because Dan wanted to visit the nearby wildlife preserve. It rained, it snowed, it was April and we drove once through town, I thanked my lucky stars I didn't still live there, and that was that, until I saw the news yesterday. I couldn't wait to leave. People toss around the phrase, "Mercilessly bullied", but having been on the receiving end of the worst the North Shore has to offer for a large chunk of my school years, I can still say without hesitation that  at no point did I ever consider purchasing a weapon to seek revenge. Know what I DID do? I moved. Moved at the first opportunity. Got my belongings out of that apartment, put them in a rented storage space which I treated week after week with an insecticide fogger until I was satisfied no hitchhikers would be joining me in my exodus from the North Shore. For years I've joked about going to Deerfield High School instead of Highland Park because I didn't want to kill anyone, but it sincerely was a joke. I went to Deerfield because it was closer to where I lived and I knew I'd never get up in time to catch the bus to Highland Park. But murder? I never even daydreamed about it. You can hate people without wanting to kill them. For fuck's sake, you can move somewhere else. And if you really want to make sure you're far enough away you can move out of state, which I did.

 I don't want to hear pundits telling us how it isn't the guns, it is the mentally ill because I'm certain I tick more than a few boxes on the mental health assessments, like god only knows how many other Americans who also don't go out and buy an assault rifle to settle a collective grudge. But the ones who do have that desire? I'm no expert and I don't get paid to think about this sort of thing but from my place of unprofessional observation maybe we shouldn't be selling assault rifles because it is impossible to predict who's going to wake up on the Fourth of July, climb atop a shitty block of apartments, and start taking people out at the community parade. At the very least, it ought to be harder. This shit has to stop. It just has to. 

It is still early, and we don't have all the information about the shooter, and his motives but it doesn't matter. He killed six people, wounded 26 others and there's zero excuse. You want a class war? Join a goddamned union. You don't achieve anything shooting at children on tricycles in a parade. 

If you were keeping track of the places you shouldn't go to avoid being shot we can add suburban parade to the already too long list including (but not limited to because it is indeed a very long list to recount here) grocery store, church, synagogue, mosque, Sikh temple, Christmas market, driving down the fucking Dan Ryan Expressway, school, department store, newspaper press room, baseball game, office party, concert, nightclub, walking down the street, buying gas, and on and on and on. The mass shootings get the attention because they're shocking but getting individually shot in the US is almost mundane, and treated like some sick rite of passage provided you live to tell the story. 

Sure, it is impossible to look at what happened in Highland Park and not feel it personally. The flag-lined street littered with abandoned strollers, chairs, and children's toys feels very close to home because like it or not it was home. I can't imagine what it was like to be working the emergency room at Highland Park Hospital which is small, and probably trained for but never expected to deal with that sort of mass casualty event. A tornado sure, but a mass shooting? 

We're a nation that's increasingly angry, selfish, violent, ignorant, irresponsible, thoughtless, and incapable of long view-we shouldn't be trusted with butter knives much less assault rifles. Don't suggest it isn't "All Americans" because much like it isn't, "All Cops", "All Men", "All Conservatives", there's enough of them that we feel we need to use the "It isn't all" excuse. We've got ourselves a hell of a problem and I haven't a clue how we fix something this broken. I do know we shouldn't have sharp objects or weapons capable of firing multiple rounds without re-loading. We have to start somewhere.