Is There Room Under the Bed for All 320 Million of Us?

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

26 November 15

Terrorism need not force its way into every discussion—there's enough to be afraid around here already.

ver the weekend, a woman and her daughter were shot to death in Des Moines. The chief suspect is the husband and father. One more domestic dispute gone to gunplay and murder because there was a firearm handy. I heard about it in the shuttle van on the way to the airport. The local news reader said that Des Moines police "were confident" that the murders were not part of any "larger action."

Damn, I thought, has it come to that? Do we really have to be reassured that this unfortunately too-commonplace scenario in American life—something that simply is part of the price we have to pay for our Second Amendment freedoms—has nothing to do with terrorism? Do journalists, even the ones who simply read copy for a living, feel obligated to provide that reassurance? Is there room under the bed for all 320 million of us?

I accept that things changed after 9/11. I take off my belt and shoes at the airport just like the next guy, unless, of course, I luck into the blessed TSA Pre-Check line, for which I regularly thank Big Government Jesus. But I don't accept, and I never have accepted, the fact that "everything" changed on that awful day, let alone a week ago in Paris. I don't think "Eeek! Terrorists!" should invade every institution of daily life in this country the way it has. I don't think local news stations have any business constantly running B-roll of Paris while the local "security consultant" waxes on about the old boogedy-boogedy. And I certainly don't need any more evidence that America is a gun-addled violent place, and that it became such quite on its own.

Also this weekend, there was a mass shooting at the Bunny Friend Playground in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. Seventeen people were shot, none of them fatally, thank god. Here's some of what we know.

Witnesses saw a man with a silver-colored machine gun flee toward Louisa Street. Gunfire continued in the park after he left. It is the largest mass shooting in New Orleans since the Mother's Day second-line of 2013. Between then and now, the shootings that injured the most people took place on Bourbon Street, June 29, 2013, where 10 people were shot, one of whom died; and on Burgundy Street, August 10, 2014, where seven people were shot, two fatally.

​A "silver-colored machine gun."

In an American city.

Good thing the guy wasn't Syrian.