The last time I wrote about a book that focused on a tragic mass shooting, it was in the wake of a present-day mass shooting. That time, it was the 2015 Charleston shooting of 9 parishoners – in a church at the hands of a white man with easy access to guns.
And this past weekend – another shooting at a church, by a white man with easy access to guns, this time with 20+ deaths. It’s hard to know what to say.
I chose Columbine just after the Charleston church shooting; I chose 67 Shots after the Las Vegas massacre in October. It is incomprehensible that I am writing this post following yet another mass murder of innocent people. Suddenly, Columbine is no longer one of the ten deadliest shootings in modern US history.
That one is going to take a little while to sink in.
Last time, I got to pivot from the darkest and most difficult parts. I had a story to tell about a beautiful moment in American history – a reminder of the importance of love in the shadow of hate.
Today, I don’t. This is exhausting. This is horrifying. This is tragic. And this is not how it needs to be.
To get to the book itself, 67 Shots is about the Kent State University shooting in which four students – Sandra Scheuer, William Schroeder, Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller – were murdered by National Guardsmen who had overtaken their campus. Nine others were injured. 67 shots refers to the number of rounds fired off in 13 seconds – the duration of the attack.
As Means says, “it’s not the numbers that give the Kent State shootings such resonance in our national memory.” What he’s getting at is that the number of actual casualties is not as high as more recent massacres, but as the subtitle suggests, it was a shock to a nation rapidly losing innocence. (Of note: there was a shooting in 1966 at UT Austin – 14 murdered, 30+ injured – that was perhaps the first modern-day mass murder.)
The book itself is a well-written history of the days leading up to the shooting, as well as the incident itself and the aftermath. I was particularly interested in reading about university response, as communication by university officials during on-campus crises was the central topic of my graduate thesis. Administrators struggled to communicate with each other, as well as with the National Guard – let alone with the students. In the aftermath, confusion was based around inaccurate dissemination of information. As with so many on-campus crises – this is a lesson learned far too late.
Early in the book, the line “and history continued to march forward to its grim conclusion” stuck out at me. This gave me a moment to question why I was reading it – I knew the ending. The facts didn’t make any additional sense of what happened – a better understanding of the timeline, sure, but not a true grasp of the why.
But at a deeper glance, that line has another meaning. That shooting – as presented by Means – was inevitable. And somehow, so are all of the ones that keep happening today as no meaningful change takes place.
The weapons that were used at Kent State were M-1 rifles. Per Means, the bullets used in those weapons are “lethal more than half a mile away” – designed to go through THREE human bodies at a distance of 250 yards.
There are more details still emerging about Sunday’s massacre. I am not a gun expert; I will know only what I read about the weapon based on others’ interpretations. But these machines designed specifically to murder? No one – not a civilian nor a National Guardsman – needs a gun that kills at that distance or that rate.
It’s ridiculous, upsetting and frustrating that these posts are evergreen. We have – somehow – not come that far since May 4, 1970.
You’ll like this if: you are trying to understand how this keeps happening.
It feels weird to say happy reading after this post – I do hope you find something happy to read.
Suggested Reading:
– Chris Murphy’s statement on the Texas shooting
– Texas Monthly’s 96 Minutes – about the 1966 UT Austin shooting
carlyreads 