A Near Miss

My father was a career Army officer, a paratrooper who fought through the Pacific during WWII and in Korea during that conflict. He hated guns though he grew up using them in east Texas. His family was poor so sometimes a gun was the way to eat. But we never had guns growing up, not even cap pistols. My brother joined the Navy and learned to shoot but does not own any guns. My husband joined the Navy and learned to shoot and as the paymaster on his MSO he carried a .45 or something similar when he picked up the money, but we never had guns in the house.

Here in Utah guns seem to be everywhere and that includes two of my sons' houses. My middle son and his wife go to a range occasionally and do some skeet shooting as well but the guns are usually locked up tight. My youngest son has a medium sized collection of weaponry for reasons that elude me but make sense to him, but his guns are locked in two different gun safes at his house.

Yesterday my youngest son drove to Las Vegas to spend the night on his way down to the Grand Canyon for a short vacation. We told him to be safe. When I woke up this morning at 4am, I turned on the coffee and fed the animals and then turned on my computer to read some news. Of course everyone knows what I read first and then I sat there trying to figure out if I could find out if my son was all right. My husband got up a few minutes later and I told him what happened in Las Vegas and he turned on his phone and his tablet. At 1:50am this morning our son texted his father to say that he was all right. He said he was about a block away when the shooting started and he could hear the gunfire and the people and all the emergency sirens but he quickly moved indoors. He knew we would freak out if we didn't hear from him so he sent the text as soon as he got to his hotel room.

I don't understand what that man did. I don't understand anything about that psychopathy. Kiss your kids and your partners and husbands.