TWO PUNKS WITH GUNS

Just as I was gearing up to write this month’s column that was to be dedicated to the horrific mass shooting that happened at Tops on Jefferson, news of another horrific mass shooting broke, this time in Uvalde Texas, involving elementary school children.

Both affected me for two different reasons.

The Buffalo shooting shook me due to my familiarity with my hometown and because of where it happened; Tops Friendly Markets. I can’t say I ever visited the Tops on Jefferson. As a true west sider, the only two Tops Markets I visited consistently were Tops on Niagara Street,  and occasionally, Tops on Grant/Amherst.

However, my lack of familiarity with the store still made the terrible news feel close. As a kid in High School, I spent my years working at the (old) Tops storinon Niagara & Maryland as a cartboy, stock boy stocking shelves, and finally got into working in the dairy/frozen department.

When the news broke of the racist rampage at Tops on Jefferson, I pictured myself as a kid, working at Tops, being in the situation those poor souls found themselves on that fateful afternoon when their lives were senselessly taken. These folks were milling about doing normal Saturday afternoon tasks and just like that, their sparks were all extinguished, all because a racist punk with a gun just could not accept the fact that Black people exist.

Seeing friends back home “Mark themselves as safe” on social media was a little distressing, especially knowing that 10 people would never have the chance to do so.

When the news of a shooting in an elementary school in Uvalde Texas broke, my heart grew angry and scared. As a father of three young children, two in elementary school, I just could not help but put myself in those parents’ shoes, the parents whose children were murdered for no other reason than being in the classroom on the last week of school. My immediate reaction was to take my children out of school. When I dropped them off at school the next morning, I just couldn’t help but think of the parents who dropped off their children the day before, just as I had, who didn’t have a clue that this would be the last time they would see their children alive. 

Again, because of another punk with a gun.

We cannot become numb to these massacres. People in both mass shootings want to look at the mental well-being of both shooters and point to mental illness as the reason almost 30 people died in the 10 days from the Buffalo shooting to Uvalde.

Mental illness is not an American-exclusive condition. Mental health is something all countries worldwide deal with, however, the US is the only country in the world where mass shootings have become a common occurrence.

The common denominator? The guns are easily accessible to people who may be deemed mentally ill or not.