On Wednesday, Telemachus Orfanos, a 27-year-old Navy veteran and survivor of the Las Vegas concert massacre was killed by 28-year-old Marine veteran and mass-shooter at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California.
In a disturbing revelation, Telemachus wasn’t the only 2017 Las Vegas country music festival survivor that was in attendance at the Thousand Oaks nightclub where twelve “College Night” patrons died Wednesday.
When the first shots were fired at the Borderline, David Anderson immediately knew he was in the middle of a mass shooting. He had also lived through it last year in Vegas.
After learning of her son’s death, Susan Orfanos spoke to the press.
Whether anyone will listen, her husband said, the victim’s parents know that’s hardly certain.
“If mowing down 5-year-olds at Sandy Hook didn’t make an impression, nothing will,” said Orfanos, a semiretired substitute teacher. “The bottom line is the NRA owns most of the Republican Party, and probably some of the Democratic Party as well. Until that vise is broken, this is not going to end.”
(The NRA gave financial backing to a handful of Democratic congressmen this cycle, according to the Center for Responsible Politics, a nonpartisan research group.)
However, “This week brought some electoral breakthroughs for gun-control advocates, and then yet another mass shooting” according to the Washington Post.
Thursday, as news of another mass shooting settled in, Democrat Lucy McBath, a gun-control advocate who lost her son in a fatal shooting in 2012, sealed her victory in a Georgia House district once held by Newt Gingrich. McBath, who was inspired to run after Parkland, ran on her personal story.
In another win for gun-control advocates, Democrat Jason Crow beat incumbent Rep. Mike Coffman (R) in a Colorado district that includes Aurora, the Denver suburb where 12 people were killed in a movie theater in 2012, not far from Columbine High School.
Just one day after the mid-term elections, and for their second time, the Orfanos family waited by their phone for many hours, desperate for news of Telemachus’ status after the mass shooting.
From the Washington Post:
It wasn’t until noon on Thursday that a police officer told them the news: Their 27-year-old son, Telemachus Orfanos, was dead. That marked the end of one grim ritual and the beginning of another, as the Orfanos parents channeled their private anguish into a public cry for gun control — a cry that has echoed from Aurora to Newtown and beyond.
But what distinguished their plea was an utter disavowal of the stock response to the violence that claimed their son’s life.
“I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts. I want gun control," Susan Orfanos said on local TV.
Numerous Borderline bar regulars had attended the Las Vegas concert and survived a mass shooting that left 58 people dead.
“Vegas Strong” shirts were often spotted at the bar. Patrons gathered here for healing and community. The were a “family,” as Anderson described it.
Now, 13 months later, many again fled the gunshots and chaos of a mass shooting, with memories of the first terrifying experience guiding their actions in another scene of carnage.
“I was at the Las Vegas Route 91 mass shooting, as well as probably 50 or 60 others who were in there at the same time as me,” Nicholas Champion said in a television interview. “We’re all a big family, and unfortunately this family got hit twice.”
A news article from Splintered.com titled “There's Nothing More American Than Survivors of One Mass Shooting Being Caught in Another” ends with this portentous pronouncement:
Welcome to America—a country so hopelessly addicted to guns that surviving one mass shooting is no guarantee that you won’t be caught in the middle of another one just a year later.
Even once, it is a strain on the imagination: put yourself in the place of the survivor of one of the most terrorizing spontaneous threats of modern life...in an instant, is this happening? Yes. This is happening.
Even once, it is a strain on the imagination: to conceive of parents enduring the excruciating torture of waiting out the trickle of initial news reports, delays of triage, confusion and trauma of victims, and the investigation of a mass shooting investigation. No. This is happening.
Once is a strain on the imagination. Twice is utterly unimaginable.
This is the newest, cruelest reality for some victims, survivors, and relatives of mass shootings: the double-event survivor.
And the most distressing concept is that there is a subset of their group: the one-event survivor/second-event fatality. Like Telemachus Orfanos or Jessica Ghawi.
Jessica had moved to Colorado after surviving shooting at a Toronto mall in June of 2012 that left two dead and several wounded. She blogged about the experience, writing that it reminded her "how fragile life was."
One month after the Toronto event, James Holmes, a 24-year-old former doctoral student studying neuroscience, opened fire in an Aurora, Colorado theater, killing Ghawi and 11 others, while wounding 58.
We now have multiple stories of everyday people that survive one mass shooting, only to soon to be caught or perish in another.
Contrary to the old homily “Lightning doesn’t strike twice,” it does tend to strike again in situations where the conditions that caused the original attraction for electrons to arc ground-wards is not corrected. It is oft said that the definition of insanity is to continue on the same path while expecting different results.
For the first-time and two-time survivors that faced the Borderline bar gunman this week, there will be a long road back to recovery, whether it be physical and/or emotional.
Consider how disorienting our world has become that it is no longer incomprehensible, that it is actually within the realm of possibility, that some of the first-time survivors will find themselves in an active shooter situation again. That even among the dual-event survivors it is hardly impossible there may be those that could face a active shooter for the third time.
Or anyone of us. At a school, a place of worship, a workplace, a mall, a theater. Anywhere. At any time. Due to the frequency of these events we all live in an everyday-in-America war-zone.
Our current president calls for more armed guards, more guns. In the Borderline bar shooting, the gunman took out that threat by shooting the security guard first.
A dark bar with low lighting after the shooter had tossed in a smoke grenade responded to by multiple “good guys with guns” would have been a cross-fire catastrophe. How do you identify in that venue the “good guys” from “bad guys”?
Does law enforcement really want to police a 100% concealed carry/open carry citizenry?
There’s more required of us as citizens in building and and maintaining a rational civilization than leaving it all up to “thoughts and prayers.” Responsibility is thought pared with action.
We could listen to Susan Orfanos who has a unique perspective informing her pleas.
She and her family had received an outpouring of the “thoughts and prayers” of others while they endured the wait for news of her son’s safety after the mass-murder event in Las Vegas.
All those wistful “thoughts and prayers” had done nothing to prevent his death in Thousand Oaks.
“And I hope to God nobody else sends me any more prayers," Susan Orfanos said, vigorously shaking her head.
“I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts. I want gun control."
She emphasized each word, demanding: "No. More. Guns.”
Saturday, Nov 10, 2018 · 10:35:38 AM +00:00 · Dunvegan
It seems that even the Thousand Oaks shooter, David Ian Long, was dismissive of the impotent “thoughts and prayers” mantra that follow every mass shooting.
Authorities have identified a Facebook post believed to have been made by the shooter around the time of the attack, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the ongoing investigation.
"I hope people call me insane... (laughing emojis).. wouldn't that just be a big ball of irony? Yeah.. I'm insane, but the only thing you people do after these shootings is 'hopes and prayers'.. or 'keep you in my thoughts'... every time... and wonder why these keep happening..."