“Gladys, have you seen my keys? We’re going to be late to the rally!” Susan frantically dumped her purse out on the sofa. Lip balm, loose change, wadded store receipts, and a few rumpled flyers advertising the gun rally came tumbling out, but no keys. “ You’ve got to be kidding me”, she hissed.
“Susan,” said her infinitely patient mother, “You left them on the bathroom sink again.” She came strolling out of the bathroom, keys in hand. Susan had never called Gladys “mom”. Their relationship had always been a bit unconventional. They were both excited to have an opportunity to go to the rally protesting private gun ownership. They had always lived in a very liberal town and had never seen a reason to carry a weapon. They each carried both pepper spray and a whistle. Susan snatched her keys from Gladys’s hand and they hurried to the car.
When they arrived at the rally, things were already in full swing. “There has to be at least 5,000 people here!” Susan stated smugly. “This is awesome! If this is happening everywhere, Congress has to sit up and take notice.” She let her eyes glide over the counter protesters across the parking lot. They were here trying to defend their right to bear arms. She snickered, thinking about how dumb they were. This isn’t the Wild West anymore, she thought, haughtily, who do they really think they are?
People began to shift toward the front of the area, facing an upraised platform. There would be several speakers here and Susan tried to listen attentively. Mr. Glen Howardshire was at the podium. He was a college Professor and anti-gun speaker that toured the nation, quoting statistics on gun crime and mass shootings. He was currently on a rant about the ever-despised AK-47. Susan was passionate about her hatred of “assault” rifles. She just knew that anyone who wanted to own one was a killer at heart, no matter whether they had acted on it or not.
The afternoon wore on and people were getting restless. Susan and Gladys had expected more than dry speeches citing information they already knew and half-hearted sign waving. What they wanted was passion! Action! A statement had to be made and this just wasn’t doing enough! Scanning the crowd, she spotted an old friend, Davis Clyde. He was as dedicated as anyone she had ever met. He, too, looked disappointed with the event. She made eye contact with him and then weaved her way through the throng of humanity.
Davis and Susan decided together how to liven things up a little. Even the pro-gun guys were wilting from heat and boredom, and although the pair wished the other side would leave, they figured they could be useful. Slowly, Davis and Susan made their way toward the edge of the crowd, closer to the pro-gun side. When they got there, they turned and grinned at one another, full of mischief. “GUN!!!” Susan screamed, pointing at a random man wearing an NRA hat. His hapless surprise made her smirk. “That man has a GUN!!!” The crowd turned feral, but instead of the intended outrage, terror took over and thousands of people began shoving and screaming. Panic drove the crowd away from the counter protesters, but there was nowhere to go. The rally was set up in a parking lot and only way out behind them was to go toward the “gunman” and the front exit was partially blocked by the speaker platform. Writhing people were being crushed against it as too many tried to fit through the few available exits. Susan was horrified at what she and her co-conspirator had unleashed, and she tried in vain to push through the crowd, screaming,
“STOP! You’re hurting people! STOP!!!”
Tears streamed down her face as she looked for Gladys, terrified for her mom’s safety. There were too many bodies, pushing, punching, and literally stepping on others to get away from what they thought was going to turn into an active shooter situation. She could hear cries and moans from the injured; some of them unable to even get off the ground and away from stomping feet. She saw a teenage boy laying on the pavement facedown, unmoving. “Oh, God”, she moaned. She managed to get to him, but when she bent over to roll him onto his back, a dashing woman crashed into Susan hard. She tumbled over the boy’s prone form and landed heavily on her face. Stunned, she was too slow to get up. She felt a crushing weight on her hand as she was stepped on. She screamed but the sound simply blended with all the other voices, raised in fear and pain. She felt someone else step on her right leg and she kicked out with her left, trying to get him off her. She struggled and finally was able to get to her feet, but the agony in her hand and leg was unbearable. Walking was nearly impossible. She was beginning to realize that the panic she had caused was feeding itself. People saw others on the ground, injured and bleeding, and mistakenly thought there had been shots fired. The noise from the thousands of terrified voices made it unlikely that anyone would have heard a gun go off, so no one questioned the situation, they just tried to get clear. Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was only about 20 minutes, most of the people had funneled out of the enclosed space and what was left was heartbreaking. As Susan let her eyes take in the scene, she began to cry in earnest. There were so many people hurt. Some of them were attempting to get up; most of the conscious ones were calling out for help or loved ones. The worst were the ones who weren’t, who couldn’t. Susan stumbled in a slow circle, taking in the sight of so many bloodied, broken bodies. Broken because of her actions, her words. There hadn’t been a shooter that day, but the syllables that had been fired from her mouth were as deadly as any piece of flying metal could have been. Guns weren’t the real problem, Susan realized, as she found her mother, lying dead near the podium. Guns were objects. Easy enough to misuse, that was true. But a bullet hadn’t killed her mother today. Susan had.