In 1987, in my early forties and well accustomed professionally with firearms in the Canadian context, I flew down to Los Angeles at a time when the populace was still gripped by anxiety over a series of highway sniping incidents.
In 1987, in my early forties and well accustomed professionally with firearms in the Canadian context, I flew down to Los Angeles at a time when the populace was still gripped by anxiety over a series of highway sniping incidents. I had been in the U.S. from time to time over the years, and knew of the readier presence of guns there.
At the airport I rented a car and headed out on the freeway. Within 30 seconds a car passed me. Two occupants were vigorously and frantically trying to attract my attention, pointing behind me. The sniper stories flooded into my mind. “Someone’s after me,” I decided illogically – then did the sensible thing and cut across a lane or two to stop at roadside to check things out. The folks in the car had been signalling my trunk was unlocked.
Ten days later I was standing on a lawn with about 14 other people, saying goodbyes before heading out on our various ways. One, a local police officer, held up a sizable pistol bullet and asked if it belonged to any of us. It didn’t – but no one expressed surprise at being asked, or displayed suspicion that the officer might be trying to bust someone for an offence. He had found the bullet on the grass and wondered if anyone would want it back.
Thinking things over later, I was dismayed by my panicky assumption I had been caught up in a shooting drama, and by the casualness with which locals accepted the possibility that one of our group was packing something along the lines of a .357 Magnum – and of a bullet on the grass.
The U.S. population is nearly 10 times that of Canada. California has a bit larger population than Canada, inside about two-thirds the area of Alberta. So even allowing for national differences in peoples’ outlooks on guns, there are going to be a lot more newsworthy shootings there. That country has seen waves of violence before. Yet it seems to me that lately there has been an increasing phenomenon of disgruntled individuals deciding it is in order for them to open fire on others, sometimes slaying people who have incurred their anger, other times gunning down persons totally uninvolved with them but who furnished convenient targets for their rage. Other mass shootings are done by often self-proclaimed ideological fanatics.
The current president seems to me to have pretty much openly despaired of achieving gun control, though calling repeatedly for it and making the telling point that the U.S. pattern of gun violence has no parallel elsewhere in the world. One U.S. newspaper has referred to the “grim ritual” of President Barack Obama calling for gun control in the wake of another mass shooting. The shootings are a grimmer ritual, and it remains amazing that American society seems unwilling to take action to counter them. The gun lobby and the gun culture remain dominant in American politics.
Writer David Haas is a long term St. Albert resident.
