On Saturday, June 15, a lone gunman drove to Rochester Hills, a suburb of Detroit, and opened fire at a splash pad in a city park around 5 p.m. It is believed the man fired as many as 28 times, stopping several times to reload. Nine people were injured, including an 8-year-old boy who was shot in the head; his 4-year-old brother, who was shot in the leg; and the boys’ mother, who was wounded in the abdomen and leg.
The day before, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a ban on bump stocks, the gun accessory used in the deadliest shooting in modern American history — a Las Vegas massacre that killed 60 people and injured hundreds more. Bump stocks are accessories that replace a rifle’s stock, the part that gets pressed against the shooter’s shoulder. When a person fires a semiautomatic weapon fitted with a bump stock, it uses the gun’s recoil energy to rapidly and repeatedly bump the trigger against the shooter’s finger. That allows the weapon to fire dozens of bullets in a matter of seconds.
Reading about these two particular pictures of American life brought a sense of anxiety and apprehension as I thought about the approaching summer season. My family and I enjoy many outdoor performance activities: Helena State Capital Band concerts, Shakespeare in the Park, and a favorite, Symphony Under the Stars, to name a few. Even small events like Shakespeare in the Park (Hamlet, scheduled for Sept. 4 in Boulder) could fall victim to a random shooter like near Detroit.
