This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated November 25, 2022
Whether teenagers and faculty about to end their day in a high school in Parkland or elementary school kids just beginning theirs in Sandy Hook or fourth graders and their teachers during the final days of their school year in Uvalde, everyone should be able to feel safe in their schools.
Whether churchgoers gathered for Sunday services in Sutherland Springs or a Bible Study group on a Wednesday evening in Charleston or members of a congregation gathered for Shabbat services in a Pittsburgh synagogue, everyone should be able to feel safe in their places of worship.
Whether at a Walmart in El Paso, a supermarket in Boulder or a supermarket in Buffalo, everyone should be able to feel safe when out shopping.
Whether concertgoers enjoying live music outside in Las Vegas, clubgoers dancing to music inside a club in Orlando, moviegoers at a midnight screening in Aurora or coworkers at an office Holiday party in San Bernadino, everyone should be able to feel safe at public gatherings.
Everyone should be able to feel safe in these everyday settings, but the ever-growing list of mass shootings has left Americans with the reality that they can happen anywhere at any time in our country. Parkland, Sandy Hook, Uvalde: places that are now instantly identified, from just the name of their town alone, with the mass shootings that occurred there. And now Colorado Springs has been added to the list.
Sunday, November 20 was Transgender Day of Remembrance, observed annually for the past 23 years to memorialize those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. On Saturday, November 19 just before midnight, a few minutes to the beginning of this year’s Transgender Day of Remembrance, a gunman entered Club Q in Colorado Springs and murdered five people in the LGBTQIA+ nightclub.
“This is something these people are gonna live with for the rest of their lives. When everybody’s gone and nobody’s here, we’re still going through this for the rest of our lives.”
Richard Fierro, who subdued the gunman in Club Q, discussing the effeccts he has experienced in combat zones that every survivor of the mass shooting will contend with
Many more were injured and more would have been hurt or killed were the gunman not taken down by patrons within a few short minutes of shots first being fired. One of those patrons was retired Army officer and combat veteran Richard Fierro who tackled the shooter with another patron and then disarmed him, incapacitated him, and held him until law enforcement arrived four minutes after the first emergency call had been received.
Mr. Fierro was at Club Q that night with his wife, another couple who are their friends, their daughter, and her boyfriend since middle school. They had all come to watch Fierro’s daughter’s friend, who had been her junior prom date, perform in a drag show. Fierro’s friends were shot and hospitalized. His daughter’s boyfriend, 22-year-old Raymond Green Vance, was shot and killed.
Bartenders Derick Rump and Daniel Aston, 28, were also killed. Aston, a transgender man, also performed at the club, which his devastated mom said he loved to do. Kelly Loving, 40, lost her life in Club Q that night, as well. A friend who spoke on the phone with Loving, a trans woman, shortly before the shooting, said that she had previously been the victim of transphobic violence, surviving a shooting and a stabbing. Ashley Paugh, 35, was not a member of the LGBTQIA+ community but at Club Q to enjoy some entertainment. She leaves behind a distraught husband and daughter.
This attack was the confluence of America’s problems with guns and targeted communities. We do not yet know the shooter’s motivation and a lawyer representing him did state that he identifies as non-binary, but we do know that this man, Anderson Lee Aldrich, was able to obtain a weapon of war despite a disturbing history that included a bomb threat and a standoff with law enforcement previously, and a bar that caters to a frequently-targeted community was the site of this attack.
Rhetoric does not force someone to commit mass murder but given that there are individuals in our society who are on the brink emotionally and/or mentally, the demonization of entire communities often contributes to creating targets for disturbed individuals. In many conservative circles it has become acceptable to characterize members of the LGBTQIA+ community as pedophiles and groomers, which is completely unacceptable, as it has been known to foster hate in non-LGBTQIA+ people, as well as in some who struggle with their sexual orientation or gender identity.
This mentality is the view of a dwindling minority, as evidenced by those who had come together to enjoy themselves in Club Q the night of the shooting – LGBTQIA+ folks and straight, cis allies – and, tragically, in the diversity of those who were killed.
