A Terrifying Brush With Tragedy This Week

I woke up to this news and it terrified me.

We almost had yet another college mass shooting event, this time the threat was at Embry-Riddle in Daytona (via Claire Metz at WESH Orlando): 

John Hagins was arrested at his off campus apartment Thursday after two other students alerted authorities of the suspect's alleged threatening statements.

Officials have no doubt classmates of 19-year-old Hagins, an aeronautical science student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, averted tragedy Thursday, the last day of classes before winter break.

According to the arrest report, last week Hagins began talking excessively about purchasing a gun and the gun being able to fold so it could fit inside of his backpack to take to the school...

Hagins also allegedly told the student witness he would purchase a silencer so he would be able to shoot inside the school library...

"He referenced Columbine," Daytona Beach police Chief Jakari Young said. "He said once he was done at the firing range he was going to campus to enact a Columbine.

Hagins is charged with terrorism, written threats to injure or kill and attempted murder...

Some of the photos and video clips show the wanna-be gunman packed extra clips to ensure as many targets hit as possible.

And when I say targets I mean "students, professors, campus staff, and anybody else that would satisfy his bloodlust."

And when I say this news terrifies me, more than any other recent gun-related nightmare our nation has witnessed during my whole lifetime, I mean this one hits me close to home.

I have a nephew attending Embry-Riddle in Daytona right now.

Do you hear that, gun nuts? Did I stutter, National Rifle Body Count Association?

One of YOUR fucking "lone wolf" shooters was about to kill or wound a family member.

GODDAMN YOU.

GODDAMN YOUR WORSHIP OF MURDER WEAPONS, EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU GODDAMN GUN NUTS.

GODDAMN YOUR PROFIT MARGINS, NRA. GODDAMN YOUR PUSH TO MAKE IT EASIER TO GET MURDER WEAPONS AVAILABLE TO THE MENTALLY UNSTABLE AND HAPPILY VIOLENT AMONG US. 

These mass shooters, these gun nuts going off in our schools and our malls and our churches, THOSE MURDERERS ARE COMING FROM YOUR WORLD, YOUR CULTURE, YOUR OBSESSIONS AND OUTRIGHT WORSHIP OF THE GUN. We didn't ask for these rifle-toting sociopaths but YOU ALL keep insisting they have their chances to KILL the rest of us.

This would have bloodied my family.

Just as EVERY OTHER MASS SHOOTING IN THE UNITED STATES HAS TOUCHED THOUSANDS OF OTHER FAMILIES WHO DID NOTHING TO YOU BUT STAND THERE AND BE TARGETS FOR YOUR RAGE, YOU GUN NUTS.

GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL.

#GunReformNow

Anniversary: Columbine

Sometimes you just say one word and everyone gets what you're saying.

Columbine.

We'd had shootings before. We'd had mass shootings before. We'd had school shootings before. But this was a turning point in our nation's sad long history of gun violence.

With Columbine, there came this awareness of the immediacy of the act. Our news coverage - in 1999 with 24/7 cable news, today with livestreaming social media - could make a school shooting in any part of the country a sudden kick to the collective gut. It's the kind of violence that can't be ignored, aimed at our families and our communities.

Columbine became a focal point for others on the edge, driven to seek their vengeance against anything and everything. The second a school shooting happens, the earliest question tends to be "was it someone inspired by the Columbine shooters?" and sadly it's common enough for the answer to be "Yes." The Parkland shooter researched Columbine before he went on his own rampage.

And Columbine became one of those turning points where America couldn't come to terms with our violent gun culture. Despite efforts in the 1990s to restrict firearms and limit access to military-level weaponry, we had by 1999 a gun show loophole that the shooters exploited - underage gun purchases were/are otherwise banned - and which is still in existence.

Confronted with a growing problem of easier access of firearms to the wrong people, we've had the NRA and their political allies refuse time and again to allow greater gun safety laws, to limit the kind of damage a mass shooting like Columbine can inflict. Thanks to their inaction/interference, we've had far too many mass shootings since April 1999. Sandy Hook. Virginia Tech. Parkland. And too many to count.

Parkland happened just last year. Close to the anniversary of Columbine. There's been a lot of media attention about the synchronicity between the two tragedies, and the survivors of one are reaching out and connecting with the others as a kind of bookend.

Except it's not the end of it. We're still dealing with a nation where the political leadership won't listen to or connect to the vast majority of people who are begging for an end to out-of-control gun violence.

Columbine wasn't a beginning, more of a warning alarm. Parkland isn't the end, more of a reminder that our schools are targets.

It's been twenty years of one tragedy. Right now, I dread the fate of whichever poor school in twenty years has to share its pain with Parkland survivors.

Goddamn us.