by Gerry Warner
Last week, my wife and I were
getting ready to go to Spokane for “First Night” New Year’s festivities, which
our American neighbours do with great pizazz, when the first sickening headline
came across my computer screen -- “Toddler fatally shoots mother in Idaho Walmart.”
What’s this, I
thought. Some sort of sick New Year's joke? Tragically, this wasn’t the case.
My mind reeled as I
read the details. “Toddler shoots, kills mother” screamed a 72 point
headline in Spokane's Spokesman-Review. “Just a tragic accident,” said
a more sedate head line in the Bonner County Daily Bee of Sandpoint.
An accident! What
kind of headline is that? It almost sounds apologetic, I thought to myself as I
drove down Highway 95 New Year's Eve towards Spokane. Then another thought
quickly bounced into my mind: “we'll be driving right by that Walmart. I
think I’ll go in.” No you won't, declared my wife, defiantly surmising my
thoughts before I even uttered them.
But what husband
ever listens to his wife's counsel no matter how wise it may be? Thirty minutes
later we were sitting in the parking lot of the Hayden, Idaho Walmart, where
the grotesque tragedy had taken place. Even then, I hesitated. “It all looks
so normal.” Shoppers pouring in. Shoppers pouring out. The parking lot full
of sale-seekers. No sign of a memorial to the dead 29-year-old mother, a
nuclear research scientist who worked for the Idaho National Laboratory, and
along with her husband, a strong – I'm
tempted to say a fanatical – supporter of the Second Amendment to the US
Constitution, the right to bear arms. The gun, a loaded 9mm, Smith and Wesson
pistol was in a special purse designed to carry a weapon in a retention holster
in a zippered pocket. Both the deceased and her husband had concealed weapon
permits legal in Idaho. Hayden is also well known as the former home of the Aryan
Nation, a neo-Nazi white supremacist group.
A relative told
reporters the deceased and her husband were avid gun enthusiasts and had taken
many classes in gun safety. “Our whole family; we are gun people,” the relative
told the Daily Bee. “Roni usually carried on her person, but they have been
researching other ways to conceal their weapons in public.” After analyzing the
situation, the relative said he came to a conclusion that may shock those of us
who are not “gun people.”
“I can't fault her for doing anything wrong.
And I am not trying to defend the gun manufacturer or the purse manufacturer.
This is just (a) tragic accident,” he said as if carrying a loaded firearm into Walmart is as necessary
as bringing your wallet or purse. Then
again, maybe it is necessary in a country known far and wide for its paranoid
gun culture and where guns outnumber people and where even the President cowers
before the power of the National Rifle Association. Is it any wonder then that the “Home of the
Brave and Land of the Free” allows people filled with hate and mistrust to
appear in public with loaded, lethal weapons ready to shoot any fellow citizen
that inadvertently crosses their path.
Such a country has
lost its bearings, and is indeed, an empire in decline. I defy anyone to name
me another country where an incident as tragic and senseless as this could take
place. Only a jurisdiction where lawmakers have abandoned their fundamental
duty of providing security to its citizens could produce a situation as bizarre
as a toddler “accidentally” killing his mother as she wheels him around the
candy store.
Yet Americans laugh
at the follies of North Korea where children starve because of the paranoia of their leaders. But have you ever
heard of a child “accidentally” shooting his mother in the Hermit Kingdom?
For that kind of
cowardly leadership and lunacy, Americans only need to look in the mirror.
Gerry Warner is a freelance journalist. His opinions are his own.
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