The Oxford High School mass killing was just a week ago. And as happens again and again, we have heard all the same kinds of talk that miss the root point.
Why do we put up with this?
I took this picture at the end of a midnight shift at Cam Ranh Air Base, Viet Nam. It is dawn one day in September, 1968 and I took the picture just after briefing our relief. The guys on the morning-shift team kindly stepped out of the way for just a bit for me to take this shot. You can just see the a bit of the morning-shift watch supervisor to the left of the picture but close enough to the mic should he need it. The mics have a long coiled cord so he may already be holding it just out of frame. I then made my way down the stairs to the van for the ride to the mess hall for breakfast and the barracks for some attempted sleep for the rest of the day before my next shift. This is the relatively quiet time of the day after a busy mid-shift that started just before midnight. The airport will soon get really busy with departing and returning bombing missions, cargo runs by the C130s just in front of the tower, and the daily charter airliner full of new arrivals “in country” that leaves a few hours later with an equal number returning to “the world”.
So why do I have this picture in an article about kids being killed just because they are in school?
Let me describe what you see. Cam Ranh Bay is right on the coast of the South China Sea and this picture is looking east over the water at sunrise. On the left side of the frame and just 8000 miles or so over the horizon, is the “world”, roughly California, my home, where it is late afternoon. The console with its radio lights, switches, and speakers, multiple telephones, and stuff is where we worked as air traffic controllers.
There are three of us on a shift at that console with our watch supervisor (a senior NCO) standing/sitting behind us. The position on the left is “local control” who is responsible for everything in the air and on the runways. The row of red lights above his desk are for each of the radio frequencies we use. Just below each light is a toggle switch for that radio frequency and the “local” position has the switches on for the frequencies used to talk to aircraft taking off or landing. The middle position is “flight data”, my usual position, where I would sit on a regular office chair, not a high one, and use the phones to talk to other facilities, keep track of clearances and logs, and coordinate activity with the guys on higher chairs to my right and left. Just below the 4 digit (mechanical, not digital) clock is the rack of holders for “flight data strips”, tan for inbound, green for departures, that record individual aircraft, their call signs, their clearances, departure/arrival times, and other bits of information. The strips in their carriers are sorted, adding new ones at the top and removing the just departing or arriving from the bottom. To the right of the clock is a red phone without a dial, within my easy reach when we need to “roll the wagons”, that is directly connected to the fire department. The position on the right, is “ground control”, who is responsible for everything on the ground that moves and not on a runway. His radio switches enable the “ground” frequencies. What we do all shift is tell officers where to go and how to get there…
It is an exciting but awesomely responsible job where mistakes and errors have real and bad consequences. A young man quickly learns real responsibility in such a job.
What you can’t see in the shadows below the short desks across the console are the unloaded M-16s that hang on coat hooks attached to the access panels. There is one in front of each position. Sometimes if I rolled my chair too close, you can just see it at the bottom of the frame, my knees would bump into the one at my position. There are also M-16s under the panel to the left of the console where the runway light controls are and to the right just out of frame (see the picture below). I only touched any of these weapons once or twice in the whole year of my tour when someone from the squadron came up to check and service them and I had to hand it to them while still working traffic. I never knew where the clips of ammo were stored, probably in the watch supervisor’s desk or a filing cabinet but the watch supervisor was responsible for that not me. Every weapon was cleared, without a clip, and with the safety on. We did not handle them unless so ordered.
If you could look to the west (at my back in the picture above), especially during that and every other mid-shift, you would see tracer rounds and mortar flares lighting up the night on the mountains on the other side of the bay. You could hear artillery fire all night long. We were too busy with traffic to look over in that direction much unless there was air traffic to keep track of but those were the normal background sights and noises, especially at night, every single day.
There was one incident a few months after I returned to the “World” when the tower got alerted of a pending attack and the watch supervisor sent part of his team, friends of mine, downstairs. “Charlie”, i.e. Viet Cong, had gotten on the base and was possibly coming near the tower, a choice target. The watch supervisor got out the ammo clips, the two team members who could be spared grabbed the M-16s under their consoles, and they headed downstairs to guard the tower.
We get trained in the Air Force before we can handle a firearm but I’d rather depend on my Army or Marine buddies than myself with an M-16. When my friend told me the story years later, he told me that the most scary part was when the two of them were down in front of the tower entrance door in the dark behind the sandbag barrier. They heard someone or something coming up toward them from behind on the runway side of the tower and spun around ready to fire only to notice that the person was one of us, an airman trying to get out of open ground and behind some sandbags. If they had not paused to identify but fired in panic, a fellow airman would have gone home in a box just like the numerous other ones that we sent home every week1.
We did have what we now call “active shooter drills” but we were adults and in the military, not kids.
It still gives me the chills more than 5 decades later. If the attack was a few months earlier and on my shift, I would have been behind those sandbags. I knew what I was getting into (more or less...) when I raised my right hand to enlist all those years ago but I am certain that my team-mates and I, with different timing, were safer than what our schools have become. My grandchildren and all the other kids in this country have active shooter drills, starting in kindergarten. This is what our country has become because we cannot look the real threat in the eye.
It is true. I was safer then and there than our kids are here and now.
They did not sign up for this.
But we have because looking the other way seems easier.
This is the world we have created for ourselves and our children in the United States. Note that I do not say “America”. Canada and everybody from Mexico south are in America too but they, except where the United States has armed the crazies, are not down the rabbit hole we are in. We are indeed “Exceptional” — in this — and I wish and pray that we were not.
I have been beyond frustrated with the talking heads, “experts”, and politicians. Not the “thoughts and prayers” crowd. They are already as useless as they are dangerous. I’m frustrated with the ones who can’t dig deeper than “respecting gun rights” while demanding yet more safety measures. They come up with all kinds of expert strategies and tactics to survive in a crazy world they have accepted as “normal”. You could put sandbag walls around every building, just like our barracks and mess halls and still not be safer than I was back then when I got extra hazardous duty pay every month I was “in country”.
Nobody is asking, “Why are we even having these kinds of crazy conversation?” It’s like trying to get our off-the-rails, alcoholic uncle to only consume two sixpacks a day. It misses the real defect in our collective minds. His problem is the beer itself, not the quantity consumed. We have a problem of people who have a morbid desire and need for firearms for the specific purpose of subjugating or killing others. Somehow we seem ok with that.
So what is it with guns and the RIGHT to “Bear Arms”? And why is the 2nd Amendment so Sacred? I’m old enough to remember before that happened. It was not the case when I was an adult while taking that picture; years before that toxic sludge seeped into our collective soul. Back then and for almost 200 years before, the 2nd Amendment was just the reason and justification for State Militias, and eventually, the National Guard. It is no mistake or coincidence that the agitation for the Sacred right to “Bear Arms” started not too long after Reagan welcomed the new arrivals from the Southern Strategy.
What is going on?!
I have come to the conclusion that all this “Gun Rights” agitation really comes from a segment of our very diverse “White” culture that has not accepted change since they were denied their privileged place in Jim Crow. We mostly talk about the fate of African Americans under Jim Crow but not so much about the place of “whites” under it. Being “white” under Jim Crow was not so bad. You may have been dumb as a box of rocks, have had a shit job, few prospects, and lived in an perpetually backward state under the thumb of your “betters” but you at least had “n****rs to kick around. At least that was something I suppose…
I was stationed in Texas and Mississippi before I got orders to Viet Nam so I remember the tension and angst during that time of Civil Rights marches and “Freedom Rides”. The South, at least the “White” South was loosing its clout and they knew it. Their behavior was becoming no longer acceptable to the rest of the country. Their “way of life” — it had been frequently described to me as just that numerous times — was no longer respected or condoned. The “Liberals” passed all those Civil Rights laws, of course. No wonder the GOP Southern Strategy worked.
I should be clear and point out that this has never been solely a Southern problem. It has been pervasive throughout our country since 1619 — a long time ago. We have all heard about “de jure” and “de facto” Segregation. In the South it was brutally explicit whereas those of us elsewhere could hide behind a less explicit version of the same thing. It is easier to point out the speck in the South’s eye than it is to see the log in our own. I suspect this may relate to how we tolerate this state of affairs.
Given this, what has the 2nd Amendment morphed into thanks to the NRA, the subverted and transformed GOP, the likes of Justice Scalia, and the complicit complacency of the rest of us? Their argument is all “Freedom” and “Protection” and “Preventing Government Interference”. But whose “Freedom”? Whose “Protection” and from what or whom? As we have heard since Reagan, the need is to “Prevent Government Interference”. But interference from what? Flaunting the clear civil rights mandate of the Constitution? Interference that disrupts Jim Crow? The argument is and always has been all about the “White” side of the Jim Crow debate. Anyone thinking this “right” extends to anyone else, especially people of color, and really especially African Americans is smoking better dope than I can buy (and I grew up in California and currently live in Oregon...). This applies only to the perceived privilege of a particular subset of the population, mainly male and of European descent. It is their (sole) “Right” to to have unfettered access to urban combat level weapons should they need to decide to invoke “Second Amendment Remedies” as voiced by more than a few GOP politicians and talking heads. We saw this in full force on January 6, 2021.
Let’s put this in a broader perspective. In the decades since my service time, I’ve pursued hobbies that involved making things. I have a pretty complete shop by now containing a lathe, a mill, welders, and various tools like hammers. I subscribe to magazines tailored to all things metal and one of those magazines has a regular feature called “Shop Notes of an Amateur Gunsmith”. My lathe is often described as a “gunsmith lathe” because of its accuracy and ability to handle larger things like long gun barrels. I enjoy reading that feature every issue even though I have not handled a firearm in decades and would not tolerate one in my home. His topics have nothing to do with the political debate. He describes projects to restore old, often rare, firearms to operating condition or how to improve the accuracy or handling of these firearms. It is a hobby similar to my own where the challenge is to make or repair a particular product of an earlier time better than when it was when new. The author has no interest, unlike the 2nd Amendment crowd, in modern assault rifles or the current crop of 9mm military/police firearms. It is all about “Hey, I found this rusty 1860 Henry rifle in grampa’s attic and made it work like new and more accurate than new.”
I have been in a gun shop only once in my life and that was recently in a local gun store here in Oregon. I was there to get a can of preservative gun oil because, in case folks haven’t noticed, it rains a lot up here in the Paciific Northwest, and I needed something to protect my machine tools from rust, something also needed by hunters out in the woods. Also, they are local rather than Amazon. The store had one aisle containing cleaning and lubricating products but all over the walls and in the cases were AR-15s and AK-47 clones and the display cases were full of various high capacity 9mm sidearms. And no, I didn’t go over and look at them. I already know them and can field strip and reassemble one in my sleep. The store also had clothes racks full of body armor and “survival” gear. There was not a hunting firearm or sport hunting item in the whole store.
I had a “flak vest” and a steel helmet “pot” in Cam Ranh and they were heavy, bulky and a sweaty pain to have to wear. But I knew what they were for and was ready to get them on fast if needed. They were meant for protection in a firefight — nothing else. The store’s product offerings of body armor, helmets and gear was as prominent as the AR-15s on the wall. This is what the 2nd Amendment crowd is really all about. They, and their like-minded “White” folks are not interested in a bolt action deer rifle or duck hunting shotgun. They want the government to preserve their access to terrorist class weaponry so they can bend our government, the one that is supposed to serve all of us, to their will. We saw that most clearly on the Capital steps in all its degrading horror right there in our living rooms just a few months ago.
So let us be very clear. We allow this hostile element of our population to arm itself to the teeth while we complicitly watch. We all know that all that rhetoric only applies to their rights — people of color know better and act accordingly. These people are very clear about why and how they would control the rest of us for their own benefit. That has been the clear goal ever since this cancer on our society moved to a more compliant host in the form of the GOP back in the 1980s. It has now metastasized self into plain view.
And that is telling. This is all about firepower, concealable large magazine, quick reload firepower, urban warfare assault rifles. No one is interested in bolt action internal magazine game rifles or birding shotguns. No one on either side. It is firepower with the intent and goal of maintaining “White” privilege.
And we are offering up our children as a sacrifice to those alleged “rights”.
Shame on us.
1. Every time I hear the rubbish from an NRA gun nut about “guns protect people” or a “good” guy
with a gun… I think of this incident. My friends/team-mates and I were trained. We expected these kinds of incidents and took these conditions even more seriously than our responsibility to safely direct traffic. All that talk is (insert expletive here) rubbish put forth by fools who have never, ever been in the position of knowing that the M-16 their knees bump into is real, the clips of ammo are real, and the possibility/probability of violent death is very real. If you have not been there and lived it, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Update:
It seems I have smoked out other simmering issues. I’m putting this below the footnote. The article as-is speaks for itself. This article and this update are politics set aside. That is irrelevant. This is a cancer on our soul, a wound that will never heal with bandaids, bromides, or pain meds. It must be faced head on and cut out. Let the politics sort themselves out after surgery.
First, one comment suggested that I include the Vietnamese people because they suffered more than anyone. I saw their poverty and misery first hand at a level where words abandon us. But by this time years later we could also throw in Iraqis and Afghanis. But that adds another topic (and possible muddling of the point) as I say in my reply to him. However, after reading other comments I remembered the Free Fire Zones.
A free fire zone is just that. Somewhere up the chain of command far from the sounds and flashes on the other side of the bay some tactical genius with questionable moral credentials decided that free fire zones were a good idea. It is simple enough. In certain designated areas, at night and in certain places all day, you can fire on anything whether it moves or not. A whole lot of beyond dirt poor peasants simply got gunned down — along with chickens, water buffalos, and “stuff”. That is what the tracers and artillery were all about. The goal was to keep Charlie moving and scare the locals into “safe”, i.e. fortified government controlled areas. This has similarities to the “hardening” of school sites… I’d have to think about that a bit more but there are rhymes and harmonies (in a sick sort of way) between the two.
Second, in full disclosure per my bio, I’m an ordained Episcopal Deacon (retired now) and as I look back on 33+ years of service to the poor, the forgotten, and the homeless, I see — I know — a connection between what I saw and experienced back then and my call. It has also taught me an important lesson touched on by some of the vets here. They talk about their guilt feelings along with motivations and struggles since that time. It takes time to learn what we need to learn a bit at a time. It cannot be rushed. Here is how I have processed it:
I came “in country” when I was 21. I was experienced for the job by that point as I had over 2 years of solid experience plus the tech school. I knew my craft and I did it well. But there is another side, what a 21 year old knows and doesn’t know of the world and himself. That takes time.
Warning: What follows directly addresses grief and loss. Be prepared or reconsider if this is a trigger for you.
I mention in one of my replies that the mortuary flight came in and out every week. As I remember, it came and went every Thursday. Some were civilian air cargo charters and some were C141 cargo. Sometimes, especially in the heavy months of early-mid 1968, there would be two at a time. We had lots of civilian cargo and passenger traffic since Cam Ranh was, as it is now, an international port of entry. Only back then, it was all U.S. military related.
One afternoon when I was taking a short stretch break I took the field glasses and scanned the north ramp (way off to the left of the frame). That was the “terminal” and cargo section, just north of all the C130s in the picture. I saw a cargo plane loading pallets. Before that time they were just regular cargo runs in and out. But once I saw what they were loading, they were easy to spot. There were casket boxes stacked three across, two high and covered with a cargo netting. As I remember, it was every Thursday, arriving around 1300 local and departing 1600 or so, a few hours after all of the passenger flights had come and gone. That was a sobering thought but traffic is busy and back to work.
After that I’d see them on the ramp or taxiway and know what they contained. But traffic is busy that time of day. We did our jobs. I’d get their clearance from departure control, ground would deliver it along with taxi clearance to runway 02L. I’d get release from departure and local would give it along with takeoff clearance. That was followed by handoff to departure as they turned over the South China Sea on their way to Manila or Japan and eventually Travis AFB in northern California. By then, we were on to the next one landing or departing. Out of mind until next week.
But not really forgotten. Years later (1983?) I had a business trip to Washington D.C. and finagled a way for our young family to come with me for the week, me at the convention and mom and kids at the museums. It was February, a cold, snowy February but one thing I wanted (needed) to see on the Mall (with much mixed feelings and trepidation) was the “Wall”. I got there from the convention center first one afternoon (no mobile phones in those days) while my wife struggled through the snow with three kids in tow.
I first walked the Wall from left to right, 1956 to 1976 and then went back to the middle, the highest point; 1968 through 1969. My time “in country” spans both sides of that point, the bulk of the names. I knew no one whose name was on that wall but it hit me with the wonder of how many and which names were attached to those boxes we cleared for takeoff every week. I felt a deep sadness as I stood there not really able to speak. For a short bit my wife was angry with me because I didn’t respond as she called out to me while struggling with a stroller in the snow. I saw people touch the wall. Some got out paper and pencil to trace a name. But still, they were just a name on a wall and another of many flight data strips that started at the top of the rack and moved down the rack until I filled in the departure time and dropped it into the storage slot in the console all those years ago. It was an indirect sadness.
One of the aspects of my ministry was that I had a full time job in Silicon Valley tech as well as ministry duties. Years later, early 1990s, after I was ordained, I was asked to do a burial at the National Cemetery in San Bruno just south of San Francisco because it was not too far from my office. And elderly couple was burying their only son who died in his mid-40s from injuries he got working on the ramp at some airbase in Germany. Ramps are dangerous places. He was disabled for all those years until his injuries finally killed him. As I read the service and put his ashes in the ground I looked up at his parents. I have never seen such grief. This was their only child and I was putting what was left of him into the ground. On the way home I thought and prayed about that and remembered those weekly flights, three across, two high, not like the pictures you see in DoD press releases with the lone coffin in the middle of the cargo deck with an American flag draped over it. No, just boxes on pallets. At the rate of killing that year, repatriating bodies one at a time that far would bust even a DoD budget. I really understood then, as I commuted home, what happened at the end of each of those flights and before the name was added to the wall; the grief of a parent burying their deepest hopes in a box in the ground. Every one. Faces of bottomless grief.
My next door neighbor in the ‘90s was a Marine at Khe Sanh during the thick of it. We were vets so we knew even though we didn’t talk about it. In simple terms, he drank himself to death in the late 90s. The day he died his wife came next door and asked me to help her. It is too long a story to tell here but his marine buddies were at the funeral and then the burial at the National Cemetery in the Central Valley. Again it was a searing wound and grief caused from so far away. Another name for the wall although his wounds, silent and late as they were probably don’t meet the requirements.
During my active ministry I have officiated at many memorials. I don’t have a problem when the deceased are in their 80s or 90s. We can celebrate a life well lived, fond memories of grampa or gramma. These two guys, one I never met and the other who lived a haunted life next door stand out as hard to forget. I cannot imagine the grief of a family whose little child, full of hope and expectation, died in a free fire zone called a school. We can fool ourselves and salve our conscience by lying to ourselves about “bravery” and “last full measure of devotion”. What do we say about a child? That he/she loved Legos?
We did this.