Monday was the Fourth of July — a day to celebrate our country with cookouts, fireworks and parades.
Horrifically, Monday also displayed something else that is becoming all too common in the USA: a mass shooting.
A gunman on a rooftop using a high-powered rifle shot into spectators enjoying a parade in Highland Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Early reports were that at least six people were killed and more than two dozen were sent to the hospital with injuries.
Several hours after the incident, a “person of interest” had been identified, named and taken into custody. But as far as a motive, Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office said in a press conference, “By all means, at this point, this appears to be completely random.”
Even in a nation familiar with these kinds of stories, Monday’s news — that a gunman apparently randomly fired into a crowd of families, including small children, at a parade — was stunningly agonizing. And it was a bleak reminder of recent shootings that cut through life’s everyday activities — going to school, going to church, going to the grocery store.
Following the shooting, communities around the Chicago area canceled festivities.
Meanwhile, many across the country had to wonder how safe they were celebrating the holiday. Appearing on CNN’s superb breaking news coverage, former Baltimore mayor and attorney Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said, “You have to continue to do the things that bring us joy. We cannot let this what I believe it is a terrorist win. He’s trying to cut at the heart of who we are, our community.”
Rawlings-Blake continued, “This person … he was bold and he was evil. To go someplace — on a roof. He can’t just evaporate. He had to go back into that crowd. That’s bold. But it’s also evil, and we cannot let that win.”
Shawn Cotreau, a 47-year-old man visiting from Boston with his wife and three children — ages 11, 9 and 2 — told The New York Times’ Claire Fahy that they were sitting in chairs about 20 feet away from the gunman. Cotreau told the Times, “I can’t even get the image of the guy out of my head. He was just opening up fire. And I saw the bullets hitting the tree that was like literally in front of us.”
During one live report, CNN showed an empty street lined by lounge chairs hastily abandoned by those who fled after the shooting began. Some of the chairs were made specifically for kids. And here’s a powerful photo from Chicago Tribune photojournalist Brian Cassella.
While the CNN panel was looking at video of the scene following the shooting, former Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Juliette Kayyem noted how witnesses said they saw people putting children into dumpsters to protect them from bullets. She then said, “The dumpsters are actually there as a response to a different kind of threat.”
Kayyem then reminded how the dumpsters were used to stop and deter those driving vehicles from plowing into crowds, adding, “This is one of those horrible things where we just keep trying to minimize the violence wherever it comes from, but on July 4th where there are families, we’re still vulnerable.”
Interesting tweet
From author Bill Carter, well known for his late-night TV wars book “The Late Shift” and CNN contributor: “Juliette Kayyem on CNN properly noting the professionalism of the Highland Park officials and (contrasting) w the disaster we witnessed in Texas.”
Romney’s warning for the future
Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney has written a piece for The Atlantic that was published Monday: “America Is in Denial.”
Romney writes, “President Joe Biden is a genuinely good man, but he has yet been unable to break through our national malady of denial, deceit, and distrust. A return of Donald Trump would feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable. Congress is particularly disappointing: Our elected officials put a finger in the wind more frequently than they show backbone against it. Too often, Washington demonstrates the maxim that for evil to thrive only requires good men to do nothing.”
Romney goes on to write, “I hope for a president who can rise above the din to unite us behind the truth. Several contenders with experience and smarts stand in the wings; we intently watch to see if they also possess the requisite character and ability to bring the nation together in confronting our common reality. While we wait, leadership must come from fathers and mothers, teachers and nurses, priests and rabbis, businessmen and businesswomen, journalists and pundits.”
Some Fourth of July thoughts
Brittney Griner’s plea
