by Bill Batson

Only providence kept the death toll low in the Garden State Plaza Mall shooting on Monday, November 4, 2013. The gunman had many targets, but chose to take only his own life. No security measure or piece of public policy kept anyone safe that day. With government abdicating any responsibility as these active shooter incidents proliferate, we seem to be at the mercy of mad men with guns.

The active shooter event at the Paramus, New Jersey mall was certainly less lethal than other recent shootings, like the September 16, 2013 attack at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC where 12 people died. However, my reaction to the local episode was visceral.

What is an “active shooter?” According to the U.S Department of Homeland Security, an “active shooter” is “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area; in most cases, active shooters use firearm[s] and there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims.” Multiple shooting fatalities* 1999 – 2013 2013, Sept. 16, Navy Yard, Washington, D.C., 12 fatalities

2012, Dec. 14, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newton, CT, 27 fatalities

2012, Aug. 5, Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, Oak Creek, WI, 6 fatalities

2012, July 20, Century movie theater, Aurora, CO, 12 fatalities

2012, May 30, Café Racer, Seattle, WA, 5 fatalities

2012, April 2, Oikos University, Oakland, CA, 7 fatalities

2011, Oct. 12, Salon Meritage, Seal Beach, CA, 8 fatalities

2011, Sept. 6, IHOP, Carson City, NV, 4 fatalities

2011, Jan. 8, Constituents meeting at Safeway, Tucson, AZ, 6 fatalities

2009 April 3, American Civic Association, Binghamton, NY, 13 fatalities

2009 March 29, Pinelake Health and Rehab, Carthage, NC, 8 fatalities

2009 March 10, Geneva County, AL, 10 fatalities

2008, Feb. 14, North Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, 5 fatalities

2008 Feb. 7, Kirkwood City Hall, Kirkwood, MO, 6 fatalities

2007, Dec. 5, Westroads Mall, Omaha, NE, 8 fatalities

2007 April 16, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 32 fatalities

2007. February 12, Trolley Square, Salt Lake City, UT, 5 fatalities

2006, Oct. 2, West Nickel Mines School, Lancaster County, PA, 5 fatalities

2006, March 25, Capitol Hill neighborhood, Seattle, WA, 6 fatalities

2005 March 21, Red Lake, MN, 9 fatalities

2005 March 12, Location Living Church of God, Brookfield, WI , 7 fatalities

1999 Sept. 15, Wedgewood Baptist Church, Forth Worth, TX, 7 fatalities

1999 April 20, Columbine High School, Columbine, CO, 13 fatalities Total fatalities 1999 – 2013: 221 *There were more active shooter incidents during this period. I have only listed shootings that resulted in four or more fatalities, which is the FBI definition of mass murder.

I grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, the town where the Garden State Plaza Mall shooter, Richard Shoop, lived. The complex of buildings that he shot up was the first shopping mall I ever roamed. Aaron Alexis, the Washington Navy Yard killer lived in Brooklyn, another one of my haunts. The neighborhoods that shaped me also spawn active shooters.

The Jersey incident, and the wall-to-wall media coverage that followed, was unnerving. A friend tells me he called the store manager in a regional mall where his daughter works to make sure they had their lock down procedures in place. This holiday season, shoppers must keep an eye out for shooters as well as sales.

In the last 18 months there have been multiple fatality active shooter incidents at a movie theater, a public school, and a well-guarded military facility. Many thought that the slaughter of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut demonstrated the need for new national gun safety legislation. Our Congress saw no necessity to act.

In Colorado, on September 10, 2013, two Democratic state legislators that did act lost their seats in recall campaigns. They were targeted for supporting new gun safety laws. The measures, signed into law four months before the recall, were enacted in response to the movie theater mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, 2012, that took 12 lives and injured 70. The successful recall election, that drew national support from gun-rights activists, was meant to be a shot across the bow for any public official who is contemplating gun reform.

A conservative Australian politician, former Queensland Premier Rob Borbidge was ousted for supporting gun control in 1998. After a deranged man killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania in 1996, Australia took aggressive steps to regulate the sale and storage of assault weapons, an initiative that Borbidge championed. Two years later, Borbidge lost his Premiership.

In April, a week after the United States Senate failed to pass watered down post-Sandy Hook federal gun control legislation, Borbidge said with pride and confidence on John Stewart’s Daily Show that in sacrificing his job, he saved lives. In the 18 years leading up to Austrailia’s sweeping gun reforms, there were 13 mass shootings (defined as more than four fatalities). Since the reforms, in the last 17 years, there have been no gun massacres in Australia.

The only appropriate commemoration for the one year anniversary of Sandy Hook this December 14, would have been the signing of gun safety legislation. It seems that in America, many Members of Congress are more concerned with job security than public safety. It’s hard to imagine the scale of carnage that will need to occur for our nation’s political leadership to act.

If the greatest minds of our democracy cannot explain and reverse this epidemic of senseless violence, then we need to drop the pretense of being an advanced civilization and a morally superior nation.

This list of multiple shooting fatalities was drawn from “Strategic Approaches to Preventing Multiple Casualty Violence: Report on the National Summit on Multiple Casualty Shootings.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, John Paparazzo, Christine Eith, and Jennifer Tocco, 2013.

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Bill Batson is an activist, artist and writer who lives and sketches in Nyack, NY. Nyack Sketch Log: “Nyack Sketch Log: Attention Shoppers, Active Shooter “ © 2013 Bill Batson.  To see more, visit billbatsonarts.com

The Nyack Sketch Log is sponsored by The Corner Frame Shop at 40 South Franklin Street in Nyack, NY.