umami has a flavor

I stood fifty feet from this man when he was shot, who then hopped by us an arm’s length away, holding his bleeding calf and crying out as he tried to get across the street.  Two other men rounded the corner a moment later, falling to the sidewalk, one face down, the other slumped holding his leg.

When we heard the gunshots, I stood bewildered trying to figure out where the fireworks were coming from.  My girlfriend ducked behind my car and pulled me to the ground.  Seconds later, when it became apparent that the shooting was over, we ducked low and scrambled a few car lengths farther away from the area.  A couple across the street called 911, and I spent the next few moments scanning, scanning for signs of a threat.  Two minutes afterward, the area was flooded with police cars, fire engines and ambulances.

There’s no context for this—the hyperbolic violence of the media doesn’t factor in when you’re crouching on the ground wondering if you’re about to be shot.  Gunshots don’t sound like they’re supposed to, and suddenly you’re aware of how soft and vulnerable you are, and how there’s really nothing between you and bullets but your shirt.  You can’t hide, and everyone on the sidewalk looks like a threat.

The city wants to use this incident to validate their initiative to install surveillance cameras around the area.  Coming close on the heels of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on 2nd Amendment rights, I had to ask myself some hard questions on the way home.  But gun laws and video cameras don’t stop people from getting guns and using them for violence.  The police assure us that they’ll delete the video after two weeks unless it can be used as evidence.  The police, like the government, assure us of lots of things that don’t seem to come to fruitition.  I wouldn’t trade away one second of what I endured Sunday for my freedom and my Constitutionally guaranteed rights.  I have been hearing a common rebuttal in debates over issues such as this lately:  Freedom isn’t convenient, which is its price.  Freedom doesn’t always save lives or keep Bad Things from happening.  But I’d rather take my chances with liberty than without.