‘I bawled my eyes out listening to a newscast on Charlie Kirk’s murder this morning.  Fellow queers and any other groups on the receiving end of his hatred … hear me out …”

Trigger warning: mentions of violence

I’m not just saying this to make a statement about the latest thing everyone’s talking about.  This morning, I caught myself off guard when I had an emotional breakdown listening to a newscast on Charlie Kirk’s murder.   In recent weeks I’ve been giving a lot more thought to what I need in my surrounding environment to be feel safe, including gun safety, while living with a trauma brain scarred by years of early abuse that is constantly searching for safety.  Our internal strategies are so important for trauma healing, but seriously, we’re also never going to heal if our surrounding environments aren’t relatively safe too. 

I’m making this a personal rant for a minute, because it should feel personal that our politicians and talking heads are already pointing fingers at the “woke left” for our country being wracked with gun violence.   My own personal experiences around closer proximity to gun violence include the following… and once in awhile the folks around me have made comments normalizing this when I’ve brought up personal experiences. This could be a variation of your experience too… but do you think it SHOULD be normal??? 

• Watching the entirety of the military ambulance and police force vacate the large post where I worked… responding to an out of town white shooter who killed and wounded 50 people in 4 minutes at a nearby WalMart 2019.  A WalMart I might have stopped at on my way home. Then feeling our beloved, peaceful city of El Paso bleed … and cry for months … and years.  Everyone knew someone affected.  

• Having my doctorate program in San Antonio locked down, my classmates barricading their small space as an active shooter outside emptied 7 rounds into a neighboring instructor down the hall.  I never met her, but she was a fellow female Army Officer sharing space and ambitions in the same field.  She survived, forever disabled by an angry intimate partner. 

• Being DIRECTLY threatened with a loaded weapon in Alaska … it was complicated … but not really.   Women & femmes in their home spaces shouldn’t be intimidated by armed men on the street firing lethal weapons – PERIOD. 

• In the last few years within 500-1000 feet of our home in Virginia: An intoxicated neighbor indiscriminately waved his gun at us as he walked by on the sidewalk.  We were just taking our dog out for our usual stroll.  Being woken from a sound sleep by multiple rounds being fired into cars less than a few hundred feet from our bed by an angry, intoxicated human.  A human shot and killed at the park across the street  A neighbor shot where we park our cars at home. Another human shot at the neighboring convenience store

• Should I even mention the 2022 mass WalMart shooting taking the lives of six people in the next town over (Chesapeake, VA)?  Or does anyone even remember or KNOW this one?  Why would we remember, in country where people easily murder their neighbors with guns at a rate of 125 people A DAY?  Not to mention dramatically altering the lives of more than 200 people more per day by shooting them. 

Last week, I was on an evening walk as g-n shots ricocheted across a wide open piece of land I was walking next to – a bougie golf course, so ya know … we’re not living in the “bad” part of town.  Local officers rushed around the area trying to find the culprit shooting off multiple rounds in our compact residential neighborhood.  I started hustling to change my planned walking route – putting more houses between me and where I heard the shots.  Five more shots were fired.  Then another three.  Then I finished my walk and just resumed the rest of the day with higher anxiety than I started. Never saw what happened in the local news.  I even forgot to mention it to my partner as noteworthy news while he traveled that week.  

So, why am I crying this morning over the death of ONE human who rallied thousands for MORE guns and the existence of FEWER trans people?   

After all, more than 300 other Americans were also shot yesterday, and another 300’ish will be shot today.  So why am I crying? Well, shit, all the above??   I wonder more and more what it would feel like to live in a country with fewer guns.  Because those countries aren’t too hard to find.  To live in a country that hasn’t convinced itself that freedom is the right to bring a swift death to the next person who makes you angry.  A country where I don’t have to think twice before I stand up for myself to someone harassing me on the street … because they could have a gun.  A country where I don’t hesitate to check on an unconscious person who might need help on the sidewalk – because my life could be the one ending if they wake up startled with their gun on hand.  Is this what we think freedom is?? 

It’s terrifying that our political climate is now making yet another unsettling shift in recent weeks to point at the “woke left” as the cause for rising violence.   I don’t even consider myself to be a “woke leftist” … c’mon really?  I’m an Army veteran who felt safer on a weapons training range than I do walking around my own neighborhoods (I’m saying this as someone with enough privilege to choose the “better” parts of town to rent most places that I’ve lived.)  I spent years rehabilitating Soldiers who were spending a lifetime recovering from their injuries inflicted by gunfire and bombs. In those environments I could express empathy while rarely shedding a tear, making that environment my normal.  

So yeah, I think I have thick skin and I’m not just a woke pussy somehow stoking violence at the same time.   And I don’t think anyone else fighting for equal rights and basic safety is either. 

Losing one more human to gun violence is really shitty for all of us.  I’m saddened for Charlie Kirk’s family and I’m scared that his murder COULD be the one that puts multiple more targets on the backs of people walking down the street wearing rainbows, or darker skin.  That’s really shitty for all of us.  I don’t know how we can keep twisting this any other way. 

***Last thing, I know this post might not be the one that helps you find peace today, and I’m sorry for that.  Take a break from the news, take a break from social media if you have to this week.  Just find your peace wherever you can, and stay safe out there.  

If you’re okay with sharing more of this journey with me, join me in a story and reflection on gun violence written in 2023.