Gun Violence Close to Home

Whenever one of these shootings happens...which is entirely too frequent...it forces me to go back in my mind when a shooter entered the office building where I had worked up until a short year before.

I was spared the carnage that took place that balmy day in June 1973. How could such a violent experience ever leave the conscious mind...even for a moment? It can’t. And, that wasn’t the only gun violence in that quiet, upscale community just south of Philadelphia.

Once the gun shots stopped, 5 men, in the prime of their careers, were dead, including my neighbor, a young father of four. A young man died later of wounds he received that day. The shooter was dead by his own hand. Many businessmen escaped by hiding, jumping from second story windows, or just lucky that day.

But, this is a free country. Free to have all the guns we want. Background searches? Nah! We don’t need no stinkin’ background searches. The NRA wouldn’t tolerate that kind of threat to our Second Amendment.

We are free...damnit! Or are we??