NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE: As coincidence would have it, I happened to be in Austin, Texas, last week as yet another human hand grenade decided it was time to pull his own pin and start picking off as many white cops as he could. The sniper — a military-trained vet — began firing into the thick cluster of cops assigned to contain a Black Lives Matter rally, then winding down in Dallas. Before the shooter was suicide-droned into his next reincarnation, five officers would be killed and nine more people wounded. In the days that followed, law enforcement officers would be targeted for ambush in places such as Bristol, Tennessee, Ballwin, Missouri, and Valdosta, Georgia. For all the talk of unity and healing, we keep on killing. Last year, police officers throughout the United States shot and killed 990 people. Last year, 26 cops died from terminal lead poisoning administered by hostile parties. The numbers this year — even in the glare of nonstop media attention — continue to surge.
While in Austin, we visited Voodoo Doughnut, a gaudy, gimmicky place that sells glazed crullers carpet bombed with enough sugar-encrusted Fruit Loops to put a room of 30 8-year-olds into hypoglycemic shock. No Austin cops were present. They were otherwise preoccupied, keeping armies of out-of-town recreational drunks from the potential predations of homegrown street drunks for whom the magical municipal mantra of “keeping Austin weird” lost its sparkle long ago. Most striking in the moment were the large number and large size of signs obliterating the doughnut shop’s front window: No one carrying a concealed firearm — or openly carrying one — would be allowed to enter.
Austin, it turns out, happens to be the birthplace of the mass-shooter phenomenon, and these signs have something to do with that. On August 1, it will have been 50 years since Charles Whitman rode the University of Texas elevator all 27 stories to the top of the Tower and for 90 deliberate minutes sprayed the surrounding area with hot lead. By the time Whitman was killed, he’d shot 49 people, 16 fatally. The Texas legislature celebrated this anniversary last year by passing a law allowing concealed weapons to be carried into college classrooms and public buildings. It passed another allowing citizens to openly carry any firearm, including AR-15s. Fifty years ago, open-carry advocates contend, armed Austin citizens helped police pin Whitman down in the Tower, thus minimizing the carnage he could inflict. Even among Whitman’s survivors, this interpretation remains the subject of fierce debate.