Month: July 2018

It must have been 1996, after Texas approved that right-to-carry law, allowing citizens to acquire a permit to wear concealed handguns in public.  I was a reporter at a small newspaper in northeast Texas.  Soon as the law went into effect in January, folks from all around came to the newspaper office.  They stood in line outside the photo studio, and one by one entered for a head shot for their legal permits, like a driver’s license.  They all left smiling and chatting with one another, happy to finally see this day come to pass.

I, on the other hand, kept my big fat liberal thoughts to myself.  Still, I thought, “What in the world is going on out here!?!!”  Seemed like I’d stepped into a parallel universe.  To my mind, everyone carrying a gun in public was unimaginable throughout my lifetime, at least to the people I knew, mostly city dwellers.  But ever since that mass shooting in 1991 during lunch at Luby’s, millions of Texans remained on edge.  One of the survivors, whose gun was restricted to her car, swore she could have stopped the murderer if she had been allowed to carry her firearm into the cafeteria.  She determined to get legislation passed so everyone in Texas could have a shot at stopping a  public massacre next time … because, even though back then we didn’t know it, there most definitely would be a next time—dozens and dozens of mass shootings across the nation to this very day.

Back in Dallas for a New Year’s Eve party in 1995, my city friends and I laughed and laughed at the ludicrous gun law, a Wild West solution inappropriate to modern times given the nation’s enormous population most who live in close quarters.  We made fun of how gun-slingin’ might go down, pointing our fingers like a gun or holding a pretend rifle at each other: “You better smile when you’re lookin’ at me, cowboy.”  “You lookin’ at me?  I don’t see anyone else around, so you must be lookin’ at me!”  “Why you starin’ at me?” “What do you mean I owe $40 for a bar tab?  I don’t owe you s&^$!”  Pow!  Pop pop pop.  Rat-a-ta-a-ta-a-ta-a-ta-a.  We laughed so hard, we cried real tears.

At the time most of my city friends were not Texans and indeed hailed from way up north.  They’d never heard of people carrying guns in public.  Well now Texas is not called the Lone Star State for nothing.  Yet I shared my northern buddies’ ‘blown minds’ at the reality of allowing everyone to pack heat.  Even with so-called background checks, we could see what was bound to happen with more people carrying guns everywhere they go: more bloody shootings, maybe more shootings with the right-to-carry law than if we civilians weren’t allowed to have guns in public.

During the state’s controversial gun debate, I covered every step and talked with police chiefs and sheriffs, men who did not support the forthcoming law no way no how.  They stuck to their guns, so to speak, and tried to convince the public everybody should not be allowed to carry guns.  And then off the record, those same law officers advised me, a single young lady at the time, to keep a handgun for my protection and suggested tucking it underneath the driver’s seat of my car.  No way, I protested.  I was a city girl and didn’t like guns at’all.  I didn’t think anyone except the military and law officers should carry them.  It was how I was raised, the era in which.

Pointed right at me

So everyone was allowed to carry concealed guns including a fellow reporter.  This was brought to my attention with silent alarm during a weekly editorial meeting.  The staff would sit around the editor’s desk and toss story ideas for upcoming issues.  My reporter colleague folded one leg across the other so his foot was resting in my direction.  I could see his shoe and pant leg … and a small handgun pointing right at me.  He wore it in an ankle holster.  Unbelievable!  What in the world!?!  Guns everywhere I turn now!?  Trying not to make a scene, I got up and moved to another chair across the room and allowed someone else to take the bullet just in case of a discharge.  We hear about accidental gun blasts all the time, usually in homes.

After the disconcerting staff meeting, I privately talked with the editor about the situation, how unsafe I felt at work now with a co-worker packing heat, his desk right next to mine, and sitting next to me in meetings with a gun in an ankle holster.  Seemed like my right to work in a safe environment was being violated, I pointed out.  Weeks later businesses began posting “No Guns Allowed” signs including the newspaper where I was an employee.

As a reporter, on occasion I inadvertently raised the community’s ire, whether a column promoting a politically or socially liberal stance or news articles about a lawsuit against a major industry or how city committees were spending tax dollars.  The newspaper was embroiled in a lawsuit with the city before I came on board as government reporter.  Unaware of the suit, in my early days I sensed hostility from city directors.  They didn’t want to answer questions for articles or work with me as I reported on city affairs.  Nevertheless, I persevered.  I had to play hardball every once in awhile when it came to government entities all the way up to the feds.  A thoroughly redacted document comes to mind from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.  What I learned as a government reporter is government officials do not like reporters questioning anything they’re doing.

The loop

Having worked at a half dozen newspapers since high school, I was not surprised to hear about an irate citizen storming into a newsroom with a gun and commencing to shoot everyone in sight.  Reporters have a long if not ancient history of dealing with those who would shoot the messenger.  Security officers were provided at major city papers where I’ve worked.  Officers were stationed in the front and back entrances of large looming downtown buildings.  There were monitors and cameras on every floor, too, along with computerized entry cards we employees had to use to unlock steel doors, probably impenetrable to bullets.

But the small-town papers had no such security measures.  They were much more laid back with friendly staff and doors open to the public.  Anyone could step inside, even ignoring a “No Guns Allowed” sign.  And America has hundreds of community newspapers still in business by having websites with breaking news and advertising.

What is different about this day and age, besides everybody’s right to openly carry guns, is a leader who proclaims ‘the media is the enemy of the people’—as if we are living in an Orwellian society—and furthermore calls ‘fake’ news real and real news ‘fake’ just to confuse the masses and control the truth.  The American media is not and never has been the enemy of the people.  Free press is listed in our nation’s Bill of Rights.  It is and was that important because our Founding Fathers respected and expected the press, which would evolve into the mass media, to watch over the day-to-day work of all government branches—this to ensure our still burgeoning democracy.

Another difference in this era from the past is more reporters, usually war correspondents, have been killed doing their jobs: informing humanity about what’s going on and why it matters.  Here in America, now a newsroom enters the mass shooting loop: blood and gore, fear and panic, thoughts and prayers, family condolences, candlelight vigils, funerals and community mourning, sustained grief and emotional trauma … and then as always the deadly silence.