It was 10 p.m. on New Years Day 1999. I was a sophomore in high school getting ready for bed without a care in the world. As I started drifting off the phone rang.
The next thing I knew I was trying to sort out what my mom was saying. She was completely frantic and barely able to get out the words. The only part I was clearly able to understand was “Uncle Rick, Shawna, and Aunt Alicia are dead; [he] shot them all. They’re all gone.”
Toxicology and police reports would eventually lay out what happened. A man my 21-year-old cousin had recently broken up with had spent the day drinking and crushing cocaine. Then he drove to her house. Her dad, my uncle, was there,installing the stereo system he bought her for Christmas. When the man knocked on the door, my uncle went to answer. Before he could even open the door the man shot through it, blowing the entrance wide open and killing my uncle. He then shot my aunt several times before finding my cousin locked in her bathroom on the phone with 911.
He then knocked down the that door and blew her to pieces while she begged and pleaded for her life. The man shot her so many times that the he stopped, reloaded and continued shooting her long after she was already gone. He then turned the gun on himself.
Thirteen years years later I am 30 and the tears are still pouring down my face just writing about the “incident” and reliving the moment that a man I didn’t even know stole from me my adolescent innocence, my trust in people, my faith in a higher power, and the ideology that had been ingrained in me since birth – that people are generally good and that good things happen to good people. All that went out the window as quickly as he could continue pulling that trigger. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop… Silence. 11 times, 11 fucking times.
It was not until many years later that I learned that the gun the man used to massacre my loved ones was the same gun his father used to kill himself decades earlier. I have no idea why anyone would keep something like that around, but that was his right, whether I like it or not. That part I have came to terms with.
What I will never come to terms with is why the Second Amendment right to bear arms and form a well-regulated militia (in modern terms, a street gang) continues to override the constitutional right of other Americans (including my uncle, aunt and cousin) to life, liberty and the pursue of happiness.
How far does it have to go and more importantly, will the senseless gun violence ever subside? That is one of very few questions I can answer and my response is simple: it will end as soon as our leaders stand up to gun lobby and its tidal wave of money and influence.
The National Rifle Association’s solution to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School – arming school staff to protect against future attacks – makes about as much sense as a doctor prescribing a bottle of gin to patient seeking help for alcoholism.
If the man who killed my loved ones were still alive today and I had just 5 minutes alone with him, I would just calmly say only one simple word… Why?
It is impossible for me to put into words or explain the destruction, the gut wrenching pain, the sight of my mother and grandmother – the two strongest people I’ve ever met – completely void of any explanations and unable to provide any acceptable answers or relief to my younger brother and myself.
When the gun debate comes up and I am around people who don’t know my story, I find it extremely hard to make my point without getting into my past. Still, I try to avoid it if I can because I think my personal experience with gun violence detracts from the most important point: that gun violence problem facing our country should not be examined based on any one tragedy. It needs to be addressed as a whole, it needs to be viewed for what it is, an epidemic.
At this point in my life, my greatest fear is that if something is not done to change the gun laws and more importantly, gun culture in America (where there are 9 guns to every 10 Americans), more and more families are going to be forced to face a night like the one my family lived through.
