BACK IN THE DAY
East High School shooting - March 22, 2023
This past weekend I was talking to my oldest friend (since before we were old enough to know what friends are), who still lives in Colorado, and she brought up the recent school shooting at East High School in Denver, reminding me of the many times both of us had been there “back in the day.”
Yeah, school shootings have finally arrived at the point where one happened that I have a personal connection to. East High and South High were sometimes-not-so-friendly rivals back then; in the segregated city of Denver as it was back then, East was the school the middle/upper middle/upper class white kids went to, while South was the school the middle class white kids went to. During most of Junior and Senior year, I dated a girl from East, and went to several social events there. I beat their 50-yard freestyle swimmer in a meet held in their swimming pool during sophomore year. I could probably still find my way around the school if I went back there.
I can close my eyes and see the hallways, and it’s not hard at all to conjure up the fear that must have filled them and the classrooms that day. It was March 22, 2023, a week ago tomorrow and already it seems like it was a while ago. Two school administrators shot by a 17 year old. This time, nobody died.
My old friend and I talked a while about how back then, nobody would have thought something like that, something like any of the school shootings, could have happened.
But what occurred to me thinking further about it is that it could have. There could have been a school shooting at South High back then. According to the “profiles” that have been developed about school shooters, it could have been me: alienated kid, not that many friends at school, not very successful academically, bullied. All that was because I am Aspergian, then as now, and back then the only thing anyone knew about that was one’s fellow students categorized you as “weird,” the one crime of youth for which the perpetrator wishes for capital punishment.
And just because there weren’t any AR-15s back then doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened.
There were guns at South. And I knew how to use them. I was on the Jr. ROTC rifle team, and I was a winner with the .22-caliber target rifles. And the ROTC unit at South had two M-1 Garand rifles and three 1903 Springfields, and ammo. Those might not be AR-15s, but each one was a major contributor to victory in its war. The Springfield, with its 800 yard accurate range, broke a German attack at Chateu Thierry in 1918 when the German troops realized they were under aimed fire, that they were individual chosen targets of those Marines firing the Springfields who were dropping like flies to either side. And they broke and ran. The Garand was the infantry rifle of World War II and Korea. The first semi-automatic military rifle. Good for an accurate kill at 600 yards. Their 30-06 bullets didn’t tear up a victim the way the .223 of an AR-15 does, but they had Stopping Power.
There was even a good place for the shooter. The South High bell tower dominates the campus. I was up there a few times - there was no place on the campus that would have offered any cover, any concealment, from someone in the tower.
The first school shooter was Charles Whitman at the University of Texas on August 1, 1966. He used an M-1 rifle, and he fired from the school’s bell tower, and he killed 15 people, including an unborn child, and injured 31 others before he was killed by two Austin Police Department officers approximately 96 minutes after first opening fire. It was shocking to anyone who can remember; it’s still shocking to consider. The death total wasn’t equaled until the San Ysidro McDonald’s Massacre in 1984.
But nothing like that ever happened at South High, despite all the elements for such an event being present there.
It didn’t happen at East High. Or West High. Or North High. Or Merrill Jr. High. Or Grant Jr. High. Or Washington Park Elementary. Not at any schools in Denver. Or in Colorado. Or in any other state. It. Didn’t. Happen.
To anyone’s knowledge, nobody thought of such a thing back then. Not till August 1, 1966, when an ex-Marine who may have been the victim of a tumor found in his brain when his body was autopsied (though no one is certain of that) took position on the observation deck of the Texas Tower and squeezed off his first round.
No bullied kids, abused kids, “weird” kids; no loners, no rejects, no failures; nobody.
Nobody. Did. Such. A. Thing.
And I am at a complete loss for how to explain that.
Rather than think about how to kill my classmates, or the several teachers I didn’t particularly like, I lay awake at night thinking of the day I would leave Denver and never come back. I didn’t think about death and killing. I thought about living and doing the things I wanted to do.
Today, the only thing surprising about such events is that they happen on the day they do.
Guns were available then. Not as easily-available as they are now, not by a long shot. But a person determined to do such a thing could have put together everything they needed.
But they didn’t.
The only things I can think of now are that if guns weren’t as deadly as they are now, if they weren’t as available as they are now, if they weren’t as fetishized as they are now...
Maybe it wouldn’t happen now, either.
But why it happens, why someone decides that’s the thing to do today, THAT continues to elude me.
Why now, and why not back then?
I have no answers.
The Washington Post has two excellent articles that went up yesterday, one on what an AR-15 bullet does to a body it hits, and the other is the history of the AR-15 and how it became “America’s gun” that I condensed down to the facts last night for those of you who don’t have WaPo subscriptions. If you can, you should read both.
You can support That’s Another Fine Mess with a paid subscription for only $7/month or $70/year, saving $14.
Comments are for paid subscribers.
Anger + gun = shooting.
Anger used to fuel art, music, writing, and activism, acts that required civilized conduct. We learned to sublimate because at that time the civilized world would not accept what is happening now that half the country seems to accept it. Nothing will change until bullets whiz by the heads of all of the US lawmakers currently whoring for the NRA.
By the way, I hope Mexico wins its lawsuit against US gun manufacturers for arming the cartels and making parts of their country hellholes from which decent people must flee in order to survive.
For people with an imagination, compassion, and a conscience, the simulations in the WaPo article are plenty graphic. But not for Republican Congresspersons and state legislators. They need an extended dose of much stronger medicine. I want to see them all confined to a locked room for a 2-hour documentary, strapped into chairs facing a huge screen, heads in a locked, cushioned frame facing screenward, so they cannot turn away. I want the documentary to be a compilation of crime scene photos of each person found dead at the scene of a mass shooting, starting with Sandy Hook, interspersed with any available footage of loved ones waiting in agony for news and then reacting to the terrible truth, and footage of first responders breaking down. Every legislator with a rating over 50% from the NRA must watch, no exceptions, no getting out early. If they are all sobbing and vomiting by the end, and have PTSD that requires extensive therapy afterward, that's fine.