EJ Montini

opinion columnist



There was a gun in the glove box of his car.

He went to get it.

If there have been no gun in the glove box the trouble might have ended after the angry, confused confrontation outside the apartment, when a stranger punched him in the face, knocking off his glasses. He got away from that and made it to his car. He could have started the engine and driven away. Or, if he wasn’t able to drive, he could have kept on walking, or running, until he was far away from the trouble.

But he didn’t. It must have occurred to him there was another option.

There was a gun in the glove box.

He went to get it.

Was heading toward trouble justified?

Now, it will be up to a jury in Flagstaff to decide if Steven Jones is a murderer, or if he killed one young man and wounded three others in self-defense.

It happened in October 2015, when Jones was an 18-year-old freshman at Northern Arizona University. According to reports there were a number of parties winding down when Jones and some others got into a scuffle. According to the prosecution, after he was struck Jones walked 150 feet to his car, retrieved the weapon from his glove box, and walked back 90 feet back toward a group of young men.

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He shot Colin Brough, 20, who died, and wounded Nick Piring, Nick Prato and Kyle Zientek, also all 20.

The prosecution calls it a rampage. Jones’s attorney calls it self-defense, saying Jones felt threatened.

The jury will have to sort that out.

Reports say there is no dispute over the fact that Jones collected the weapon and headed back toward trouble.

The jury will have to determine whether such a thing was justified or not.

What the rest of can determine, here and now, with no further evidence, is that it was stupid.

What if there were no firearm?

But, that is the way of young men.

I grew up with guys like that. I was one.

Only without the guns.

In the aftermath of a tragedy like this we get to ask ourselves a question the jury in Jones’s trial can’t be bothered with:

What if there were no firearm?

A study at Johns Hopkins University investigated incidents of gun violence on college campuses. It discovered that of 85 shootings or "undesirable discharges of firearms" from 2013 to June 2016, only 2 percent involved rampage shooters. The greatest number of campus shootings, 45 percent, involved arguments. Mostly between young men armed with stupidity … and guns.

The other numbers were broken down into premeditated attacks on a single person (12 percent), suicides or murder/suicides (12 percent) and unintentional discharges (9 percent).

The problem: Impulse control

According to the FBI, 19- to 21-year-olds have the highest rate of homicide offenses.

Researchers suspect the reason, at least in part, has to do with the fact that the brains of young adults are still developing, which can impact judgement and impulse control.

After his son Colin was killed, Doug Brough spoke out about gun violence. At a a makeshift memorial for his lost boy he said, “The only thing I have to say is somebody needs to do something about the gun laws. I think it's the politicians, right back to Washington, D.C., which I'll be going to. I will go to Capitol Hill, and I will talk to somebody. Once a week someone gets killed on a college campus and we do nothing.”

Sadly, that’s not entirely true.

After the gunfire subsides, arrests are made, and eventually there is trial. It’s happening in Flagstaff now. The parents of the accused are there. The parents of the victim are there.

Their families will never be the same.

It didn’t have to be that way. A group of young men were acting stupid and confrontational, as happens too often with young men, when it occurred to one of them that there was another option.

There was a gun in the glove box.