Maine is a small state. It’s largest city has fewer people than the city of Pearland where I live. It’s a place filled with trees and quaint houses built in clearings in front of wooded areas. When I visited there this summer I felt a release of tensions that had been building up in me after a year of adjusting to family illnesses and losses. We stayed in Brunswick, Maine which is about thirty minutes from Portland and only a matter of a few miles from multiple small towns that run along the Androscoggin River. We reveled in the beauty of the area and spoke of how safe and peaceful we felt there. Since our granddaughter attends Bowdoin College there, we felt quite reassured that she would learn and thrive and be happy in such a tranquil place. 

In October Maine really shows its colors. The leaves begin to change with the season and there is a crisp coolness in the air. The sweaters come out and festivals crop up all over the landscape. At Bowdoin College the annual Family Weekend takes place at the end of the month. Parents and grandparents travel from all over the United States to visit with their young scholars and to participate in the activities that showcase their talent. 

On Wednesday last week everything was normal until gunshots rang out first at a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine and then at a bar and grille in the same town. Eighteen innocent people just having a fun night out were dead and dozens more were insured. As the shooter fled word quickly spread to neighboring towns as law enforcement urged citizens to stay inside and lock their doors. Given that Bowdoin College is only about nineteen miles from Lewiston, students were immediately told to lockdown until further notice. 

Anxious citizens of Maine were glued fearfully to their televisions with shades and blinds drown as the tragedy unfolded. Only hours later the suspect’s car was found abandoned in Lisbon near the Androscoggin River. Lisbon is about eleven miles from where my granddaughter was locked inside a student house raising fears that the shooter might be heading south toward Brunswick. 

When law enforcement rushed to the suspect’s home in Bowdoin, which is only three miles from where our granddaughter now lives our fears grew even stronger. We had seen the area. It is dark at night. Wooded areas dominate the landscape. Someone who knows the landscape and has survival skills might be able to walk about unnoticed for weeks and may even find a way to escape entirely. The lockdown continued as towns looked as though they had been abandoned. Thursday was a long day for all of Maine. By then photos of the shooter were impressed in the minds of people all over the world. The clock was ticking and he had to be found before he hurt anyone else.

When the killer was still at large on Friday morning the concerns only heightened. The Mainers and the students at the many colleges like Bowdoin and Bates were still locked in their dorms and houses and apartments. Parents who had arrived for the Bowdoin Family weekend sat in hotel rooms waiting anxiously to be reunited with a son or daughter. News that police had found the shooters phone and a note that indicated that he might be dead was only mildly reassuring. By the evening his body was found at a recycling center that appeared to look vaguely familiar to me from our travels around the area. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief but the trauma was far from over. 

There are gentle people who were killed or physically hurt by yet another mass shooting. There are innocent people who endured two days of worry that they might somehow encounter this mad man and become victims of his paranoid anger. Individuals who had endured mass shootings in the past felt their feelings of terror and helplessness rise to the surface once again. Family members who had lost loved ones in shooting incidents were reminded of their grief that never really goes away. The whole nation wondered once again why such incidents happen so frequently in the United States. A feeling of hopelessness filled my own heart as I wondered why our nation has been so unable to agree that we have to get control of a gun fetish that is fueling divisions rather than common sense protections. 

I have made my suggestions regarding things that might help to stem the dangerous tide of bad guys with dangerous guns taking out their anger on innocent people. I know that I have a choir that harmonizes with me and a group that disagrees with every comment I make on the matter. I watch as we do nothing other than fortifying public spaces and adding stronger defenses to our homes. We talk about good guys with guns being our saviors and yet there have been few times when that worked. We say that it is mental illness that causes such incidents but we only throw pennies at the problems of mental illness in our nation, leaving the truly ill without the resources to get help. We are simply not serious enough yet even though we have reached point at which most of us know somebody who has endured gun violence or the horrific effects of it. 

At this point I worry that we are simply not willing to take difficult measures to ensure our own safety. Instead we simply continue to enrich the gun industry, deluding ourselves that if we are armed to hilt then surely we will be able to defend ourselves if a shooter shows up where we are. We have a culture in our midst that glorifies gun ownership as a sacred right that will keep us all safe. I wonder why that belief is failing to work out so well? As for myself, I am weary of learning that someone I love has endured the horrible effects of a mass shooting. I am tired of scanning parking lots, watching people inside stores, looking for exists and places to hide. Peace has been shattered far too many times. What kind of environment have we allowed to exist when no place feels totally safe anymore?