Tag Archives: mass shooting

“Tigers” Keep Rampaging Unfettered

by Woody

A tiger crept into an elementary school earlier this week, with summer vacation two days away, and fatally mauled 19 precious children and two heroic teachers.

It was not the worst such attack of schoolchildren in the Land of Freedom, if morgue-cold numbers are the criteria, for 10 years earlier a single man-eating tiger savagely killed 20 first-grade students in their classroom along with six adults.

Nor was it a rare tiger attack. Just two weeks ago a tiger killed 10 shoppers at a supermarket and over the past decade there have been more heinous, horrific, heartbreaking mass maulings by tigers than can be imagined.

Once again, again and again, words cannot describe the heartbreak…

This year, not yet Memorial Day, there have already been more than 200 mass maulings by tigers. Moreover, in 2020, the most recent year for which full data is available, 45,222 people in the Land of Freedom died from tiger injuries – half of them killed by their very own tiger.

“Thoughts and prayers,” half of the lawmakers offer after each mass mauling.

“Let’s pass some common-sense laws about tigers,” the other half pleads. “Like having all tiger owners undergo background checks to make sure they are fit to own a deadly beast. And why do civilians need mutant 15-headed man-eating tigers with claws that can pierce metal that were bred by the military for war?”

“No, no, no,” the first lawmakers demand, their stubborn faces turning blood red. “Owning a cat, even mutant tigers, is an inalienable right written on The Original Parchment and its Second Rule of All Rules is holy as if it were etched on Moses’ tablets of stone. Any law that limits tigers in any way is a slippery slope that will lead to the extermination of all tigers.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” the counterpart lawmakers cry out until they are blue in the face. “There are 400 million tigers in our Land of Freedom, more than one beast for each of our 300 million citizens. Rounding up all those tigers would be more impossible than ridding our land of alcohol, and surely you remember how that worked out. You still have your wine and whiskey, don’t you? And a bottle of Jack Daniels never killed 20 schoolchildren in the blink of an eye.”

“Tigers don’t kill people either – tiger owners do,” sneer the red-faced do-nothing lawmakers who line their pockets with gold from tiger breeders who themselves get filthy rich from selling as many striped man-eaters as possible.

“You love tigers more than you love people,” the blue-faced try-something lawmakers accuse.

“It’s the price of freedom,” insist the red-faced lawmakers. “More laws aren’t the answer. Cages won’t save lives. More tigers, not fewer, that’s the answer. Ban books, not tigers. The only thing that can stop a bad tiger is a good tiger. Thoughts and prayers, that’s all we can do.”

And so the arguments go, round and round like a spinning record album with the stylus stuck in one groove, the red-faced lawmakers thwarting all efforts by the blue-faced lawmakers even though the majority of tiger owners and non-owners alike want restrictions to slow the carnage.

Meanwhile the rest of the world’s lands, despite having mental illnesses and violent video games, suffer a tiny fraction of killings by tigers compared to the Land of Freedom. They roll their eyes with pity because they see what the Land of Freedom is blind to:

Owning tigers in unlimited numbers, including mutant multi-headed military-style man-eaters and deadly ghost tigers, does not keep people safe and free. In truth, in the Land of Freedom the people no longer own the tigers – the tigers own them.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

T.O. Latest to Become Anytown USA

by Woody

Is your Club or Group looking for an inspiring guest speaker or do you want to host a book signing? . . . Contact Woody today!

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T.O. Latest to Become Anytown USA

“It won’t happen here,” used to be a common refrain when an unthinkable mass shooting occurred.

Such thoughts belong to nostalgic days. Mass shootings in America are no longer unthinkable; they are as commonplace as a sunrise.

That is barely an exaggeration, for already this year – according to the Gun Violence Archive – there have been 307 mass shootings in the U.S. Meanwhile, as I write this, we are 312 days into 2018.

Since I file my column on Thursday mornings, it is not unthinkable that the 307 total will have risen higher by the time you read this. In fact, statistically, that is highly likely.

The 307th mass shooting of 2018 happened in Zip Code 91361. Thousand Oaks. Inside the popular Borderline Bar & Grill. In other words, “it happened here.”

How could a gunman kill 12 people in a restaurant located in a city that is annually ranked one of the safest cities in the nation according to crime rate per capita?

A better question is, how could anyone expect any city to be immune from such mayhem?

Indeed, the next mass-shooting rampage – and, sadly, there will be a next one, and a next, ad nauseam – can happen Anywhere USA.

Just two weeks ago, on Oct. 27, it happened in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA, when 11 people were killed inside the Tree of Life synagogue.

It happened in Santa Fe, Texas, when 10 high school students were killed this past May 18.

It happened in Parkland, Florida, this past Valentine’s Day, when 17 were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Those 2018 shootings above are not an aberration. In recent years, it happened at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas; in a gay nightclub in Orlando; at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas; in a movie theater in Colorado; in front of a supermarket in Tucson; in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

Newtown, old towns, every town. The specific place changes, the number of victims varies, but the bullets constantly keep flying, keeping killing, keep injuring, keep shattering communities.

The faces of the victims change and yet they also remain the same: faces of young lives that will never fulfill their dreams; faces of Girl Scouts and teenage girls-next-door; faces of Little League boys and new fathers; faces of mothers who will never see their sons and daughters graduate from high school or college, not see them marry, not see their future grandchildren born; faces of friends and co-workers and neighbors.

And faces of heroes, like Ventura Police Sgt. Ron Helus, a 29-year veteran on the force who rushed towards danger inside the Borderline Bar & Grill, took incoming fire, took a fatal bullet, his selfless brave action saving countless lives at the cost of his own at age 54.

There can be no borderline on this issue: we MUST as a nation take action against gun violence. And assault-type rifles are not the only scourge. The Borderline madman used a single .45-caliber handgun, legally purchased, but outfitted with an extended magazine.

Following the Las Vegas Shooting, I wrote: “If this—59 dead, 527 wounded, by one civilian—is what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment, they were idiots. I do not believe our Founding Fathers were idiots. I believe we Americans are.”

Thirteen dead and 21 injured, on a weekday night, in a local bar and grill, in one of our nation’s safest cities, proves our idiocy continues. If you think it can’t happen where you live, think again.

It happened here.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

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“Only in America” is Shameful

by Woody

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Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

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‘Only in America’ Has Assumed Tragic Meaning

I had a different column written for today – finished, polished and ready to file to my editor.

Then a mass shooting happened in America again, in Florida this time, in a school once more.

The thing is, if I wrote my weekly column on the mass mayhem every time it occurs in America, I would write about nothing else. In the first seven weeks of 2018 alone, there have been 30 such shootings.

No, I simply cannot write about ugly shootings every time we have an ugly shooting any more than I can write about beautiful sunsets every time we have a beautiful sunset over the Channel Islands.

Moreover, I try to use my space here each Saturday morning to lift spirits, not deflate them; to give smiles, not erase them; to offer a respite from front-page realities. As it is, I have gone against this goal and written too many columns on mass shootings – Las Vegas, San Bernardino, Sandy Hook and ten more. What else could I write that I haven’t already?

Here is what I have not before said: I am ashamed of my country.

Make no mistake, I love America and cherish our freedoms.

I am blessed to have been born in the U.S. But I am also ashamed of us. Ashamed that we allow the wholesale slaughter of our citizens – of our school children! – without doing anything meaningful to try to slow the carnage, much less stop it.

“Wholesale slaughter” is not hyperbole. Seventeen people were murdered and 14 more wounded this time by one gunman on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. By comparison, the Al Capone gang’s infamous “Valentine’s Day Massacre” left just seven dead.

Statistically, a Capone-like “Valentine’s Day Massacre” happens nearly sixfold daily in the U.S. with more than 40 gun deaths on average. In answer to this deadly gunfire, out of Washington, D.C. comes only silence.

That is not true. Our elected officials are big on voicing condolences and prayers, but small on offering any action. By a majority they insist gun legislation won’t work; that what we need are more guns because good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns; that criminals will get guns anyway; that citizens have a right to assault-style weapons; that cars kill people too.

These are falsehoods and lies, rationalizations and distractions. No other county on earth has this cancer.1flag

America has a proud history of fighting for human rights around the globe. Mass shootings and school shootings, too often one in the same, have become a human rights issue here at home. For our elected officials to not take serious measures to try to stop the triggers from being pulled is to effectively have their fingers on those triggers.

Those who will attack me for being unpatriotic, I offer Teddy Roosevelt’s words: “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

The same is true for the argument that we are to stand by our country, right or wrong.

The videos of the shooting that some Parkland students captured on their cellphones are truly chilling. It is also chilling to realize that these school shootings have become so commonplace that our students and teachers routinely go through lockdown drills the way past generations did fire drills.

“Only in America” used to be a term of pride; when it comes to gun violence, it is one of shame.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden & Me Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Boston Massacre Misnamed Today

by Woody

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Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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The Boston Massacre Misnamed Today

On March 5, 1770, eight British soldiers fired into a crowd of civilians and the result was The Boston Massacre.

What a quaint use of the word “massacre.” With flintlock muskets of the 19th century, the tally was: three dead and two mortally wounded.

On Oct. 1, 2017, one man with an armload of 21st-century assault rifles and here is what a massacre has become:

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If this—59 dead, 527 wounded, by one civilian—is what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment, they were idiots.

I do not believe our Founding Fathers were idiots.

I believe we Americans are.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden & Me Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

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Column: Isla Vista, Anytown USA

by Woody

Idyllic Isla Vista could be Anytown USA

 

Had someone asked me a week ago which university I thought would be least likely to suffer a mass shooting, I believe I would have answered, “UC Santa Barbara.”

 

I mean, how could such terror happen at my alma mater? How could laid-back Isla Vista, where I lived for two idyllic years, be the latest grieving site?

 

Which is exactly the point, I think. The next such rampage – and sadly there will be a next one and a next – can happen Anywhere USA.

The Faces We Should Remember: Top row from left to right: Weihan Wang, George Chen, Cheng Yuan Hong. Bottom row from left to right: Christopher Michaels-Martinez, Katie Cooper, Veronika Weiss.

The Faces To Remember:
Top row from left to right: Weihan Wang, George Chen, Cheng Yuan Hong. Bottom row from left to right: Christopher Michaels-Martinez, Katie Cooper, Veronika Weiss.

 

Virginia Tech students and alumni didn’t think it could happen there. Columbine High. Sandy Hook Elementary. Themovie theater in Colorado. The supermarket parking lot in Tucson. Fill-in-the-blank where mass shootings have happened in America. Throw a dart at a map where the next one might.

 

Three decades removed from my days at UCSB, but with sons and daughters of friends attending there now, the shooting (and three fatal stabbings) has resonated with me more deeply than others. Such is the power of familiarity, I suppose. Places in Isla Vista where I laughed with friends and courted my wife now come in to my focus as among the 10 crime scenes.

 

I cannot imagine the lasting heartache and mental scars for those who were there that tragic night.

 

Nor can I imagine the courage shown by one male UCSB student I saw interviewed on TV the day after. I want to call him a boy, but in truth he is a young man who had just witnessed war at the front line.

 

He saw three young women get shot, raced to their fallen bodies, and instantly knew two were dead. He turned his attention to the third woman, bleeding as she phoned her mom to say “I love you” in fear they might be her last words, and stayed by her side until paramedics arrived. She survived.

 

The young hero’s calm but graphic retelling turned the unfathomable horror into knowable faces – those of the two young women lost, the one who survived, and his own face filled with grief.

 

Faces. Veronika Weiss, a 19-year-old from Westlake High School in Thousand Oaks, was one of the two women murdered. Hers was a face of girl-next-door prettiness; a face of straight-A’s and athletic accomplishment; a face of kindness according to all who knew her.

 

            Faces. Christopher Martinez, the gray-bearded father of 19-year-old victim Christopher, who at the war scene afterward delivered a Gettysburg Address for its brevity and impassioned emotion:

 

“I talked to him about 45 minutes before he died. Our family has a message for every parent out there: You don’t think it’ll happen to your child until it does. Chris was a really great kid. Ask anyone who knew him. His death has left our family lost and broken.

 

“Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’ right to live? When will this insanity stop?

 

“When will enough people say, ‘Stop this madness!’ We do not have to live like this. Too many people have died. We should say to ourselves, ‘not one more!’ ”

 

Faces. An overlooked tragedy is that “the madman” – as one witness called the shooter – has become The Face of this rampage. I will not mention his name for it is best forgotten. It is the victims who should be remembered – Weiss, Martinez, Katie Cooper, George Chen, James Cheng, David Wang.

 

It angers me that the videos “the madman” posted online before his killing spree are played over and over and over on TV. This is exactly what he wanted, to become famous – or infamous. Hence in death he achieves his life’s twisted goal.

 

            There is great debate on the influence of violence and misogyny in video games, advertising and movies, and rightly so. But what about the influence on mentally ill minds that watch a lunatic’s evil rants elevate him to worldwide TV celebrity, so to speak?

 

            It is impossibly lofty, but I wish henceforth the media would give only 1 percent of its focus on the perpetrators and 99 percent to the faces worth remembering.

 

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

 

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”