We shouldn’t have to live in fear. On Thursday, October 26th., Insider posted this disturbing headline, “I’m sheltering in place after Maine shooting. I used to brush off my wife’s fears about mass shootings, but this is the first time I’ve been scared in my own community”
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jason Platz, a 43-year-old father who lives in Auburn, Maine — a small town just across the river from Lewiston, Maine, where authorities say a shooter killed at least 18 people at two locations.
It was a little scary because I actually went out last night.
I went to the Dollar Tree in Lewiston, where we often go for things, which is actually a half mile down the road from the bar of the second incident.
As I crossed the bridge into Lewiston and I’m on Main Street, I see about three cop cars and a sheriff go blowing by, and it’s like, “Huh, that’s really weird. There’s not usually as much police activity. Something big must be going on.”
And then I saw an ambulance behind that. I turned and as I kept going, I kept hearing all these sirens and seeing more cars.
So I get to the store and I go inside, and it’s three employees there; one of them is on the phone. And just the whole atmosphere seemed a little tense. And so I asked the guy, “Is something going on?”
And he said, “Oh, we’ve been hearing gunshots, and we didn’t know if it was the shooting range.” There’s a shooting range right down the street, but he’s like, “I feel like something’s going on.”
Then I started to really start to feel like, “Okay, I need to get home and just be there.”
Second Amendment advocate, and National Director of the Knights Party of the Ku Klux Klan, centrally based in Harrison, Arkansas, Thomas Robb said, “While of course, we all should be concerned about these ‘nut job’ shooters, we shouldn’t live our lives in fear. Taking away firearms isn’t the answer, because these types of people would still have access to them on the black market. What needs to happen, is for every law-abiding citizen in the United States to arm themselves, and be ready to protect themselves, their families, and their neighbors. There wouldn’t be this many ‘mass’ shootings if the shooter thought that there may be a chance someone nearby was armed. Many of these shooters take comfort by ending the lives of others, but they don’t want to be killed in the process. Sure, maybe some really wouldn’t care if they were killed, but if more Americans started carrying firearms, loss of life in these shootings may be less. We shouldn’t live in fear, but we should be prepared for such situations though”.