H.L. Hix

Jessica Rekos liked books about whales, horses, and fairies. 

Ethel Lee Lance liked to make bacon and grits

                  for her grandkids for breakfast.

Ryan Clark played baritone in the marching band. 

                        Friends called him “Stack.”

Satwant Singh Kaleka worked at someone else’s gas station

until he’d saved enough money to buy his own.

Sonam Choedon, born in India to Tibetan parents in exile,

                                was studying nursing.

Carole Robertson took Saturday dance lessons,

      played clarinet, and was in the science club.

Angel Candelario-Padro worked as an opthalmic technician

                       and as a Zumba instructor.

Garrett Swasey, a police officer,

            had been a competitive ice dancer.

Stephanie Works, who liked fly fishing,

had been born with six toes on each foot, like her father.

William Kinney was an avid baseball player.

5,586: between 1969 and 2009, the total number of people killed in
terrorist attacks against the U.S. or its interests, including the attacks of
September 11, 2001.  More than 30,000: between 1986 and 2010, the
number of people killed by guns in the U.S. every single year.

Violence results from violence.  □  Violence results in violence.  □ 
Commitment of violence is commitment to violence.

Parerga

Jessica Rekos kept a journal, and named her pet fish Betty.  http://www.jessicarekos.org/about-jessica/.  0223.

Ethel Lee Lance worked as a custodian for more than thirty years at her city’s municipal auditorium and for five years at her church.  She loved gospel music, and her favorite song was “One Day at a Time.”  https://www.fallenheroesproject.org/post/ethel-lee-lance.  0223.

Ryan Clark was triple majoring in psychology, biology, and English, and working at a restaurant part-time to put himself through school.  https://www.weremember.vt.edu/biographies/clark.html.  0223.

Satwant Singh Kaleka had been a farmer in India; he immigrated to the U.S. in his thirties.  He had two children.  http://sikhtempleofwisconsin.com/memorial.  0223.

Sonam Choedon enjoyed babysitting her two nieces, and she volunteered with the local Tibetan community center working with orphans whose parents had been killed.  https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oikos-shooting-victim-Sonam-Choedon-3456742.php.  0323.

Carole Robertson was a Girl Scout, and participated in a national service organization, Jack and Jill of America.  https://www.ourbiography.com/carole-robertson/.  0323.

Angel Candelario-Padro had been born in Puerto Rico, and attended optometry school in Chicago.  He lived in Florida.  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/us/orlando-shooting-victims/angell-candelario-padro.  0323.  https://people.com/crime/orlando-pulse-shooting-tributes-to-49-victims/.  0323.

Garrett Swasey was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, but in his youth moved to Colorado Springs to train at the U.S. Olympic Training Center.  He was an elder in his church, and sometimes played guitar as part of its worship services.  He was the father of two children, a daughter and a son.  https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/28/us/colorado-springs-police-officer-garrett-swasey/index.html.  0423.

Stephanie Works was home schooled, and was active in the college-age ministry at her family’s church.  She loved writing, music, and travel.  She played chess every day with one of her younger sisters.  https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/25654357/stephanie-pauline-works.  0423.

William Kinney went by “Will.”  https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2023/03/30/nashville-shooting-victim-will-kinney-covenant-student/70060282007/.  0423.

5,586: Diaz, The Last Gun, 1.  Diaz adds the qualification that there were four exceptional years “in which the number of deaths fell slightly below 30,000 — 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004.”

Violence results from violence: W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939.”  https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939.  0423.

“Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.” 

Violence results in violence: Arendt, On Violence, 79-80:

“No doubt, ‘violence pays,’ but the trouble is that it pays indiscriminately….  The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world.”

Commitment of violence: Berry, Imagination in Place, 30.

Violence “is its own way, which is entirely unlike the ways of thought or dialogue or work or art or any manner of caretaking.  Once you have committed yourself to the way of violence, you can only suffer it through to exhaustion and accept the always unforeseen results.”