The killings took place on the 14th floor of the graduate dormitory at Indiana University. Steven, already a published author, and Susan, a gifted poet and writer, were studying literature. The stalker was a doctoral candidate in computer science at Stanford University.
Suddenly, three gifted students were dead, cheated from a bright future and taken from their families forever. And why? The presence of a gun made all the difference.
Had the gun been absent, the event would have remained an angry confrontation, and three gifted people would still be alive.
That stalker used a pistol with a laser sighting device and bullets that explode on contact. A bullet blew up the artery in Steven's leg and he quickly bled to death. Susan was shot twice and was left an unrecognizable corpse. Then the stalker blew out the back of his own head.
Steven received a posthumous award for heroism from Gov. Birch Bayh of Indiana, while the scandalous toll of gun deaths in the nation continued unabated. Steven and Susan were simply added to the list of 30,000 Americans who die each year from firearms.
Both had the misfortune of being born in a nation that does nothing to stop a yearly death toll that is 10 times that of 9/11. And the German graduate student was cursed by coming to the United States where he could buy a handgun and become a murderer. Had he stayed in Germany, obtaining a handgun would not have been possible.
This is our personal story that forced us to come face to face with the monumental failure of our government, both state and federal, to control firearms designed specifically for killing fellow humans. All other advanced nations have intelligent, well-crafted gun laws that protect their citizens. And they are appalled by an otherwise respectable nation in denial about its home-grown terrorism.
The National Rifle Association has been successful at creating optimum conditions for these killings to occur. The NRA is a secular, fundamentalist special interest so focused on gun rights that it dismisses the 30,000 deaths each year as the price of freedom, and this includes the deaths of 14 children every day.
And no matter how NRA leaders twist and spin the defense of their ideology, the grisly statistics remain.
The co-conspirator in this home-grown terrorism is the Republican Party that allows the NRA to write its gun legislation in exchange for money and votes. How can anyone trust a party to halt foreign terrorism when it does nothing to stop terrorism at home and even keeps the national Centers for Disease Control from adding up the death toll because the numbers indicate a public health disaster.
Both the NRA and GOP have blood on their hands. American blood. They have morphed the 2nd Amendment right for a state to form a well-ordered militia into an individual right to bear arms.
Their crowning achievement is the concealed weapon permit where permit holders are taught to be willing to shoot to kill, and to shoot first and ask questions later or the gun might be used against them.
What kind of nation would allow this? Certainly not a religious nation for it violates the very core of the faith. To live daily, hourly with a willingness to shoot to kill separates the armed individual from the rest of society convinced that a well-trained police force and alert community are the only way to achieve security.
The unarmed majority should demand gun laws equal to those of other advanced nations. We cannot allow an NRA-GOP conspiracy to poison America's promise of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Our son, along with the other 420,000 people who were shot to death since his killing 14 years ago, and the thousands that preceded him, are the victims of a cruel and senseless broken promise.
The United States can be just as safe from gun violence as any other advanced nation. Only the NRA and GOP stand in the way.
---
* RON AND NORMA MOLEN live in Salt Lake City. Ron Molen is a retired architect and both are artists. They have been married 51 years with three living children and 10 grandchildren.
