Last night, Chelsea and I sat down to enjoy dinner (without the kids) at Julianna's, a local restaurant in Cortlandt Manor that we love.
However, within a few minutes of our arrival we were both distraught and literally fearing for our lives. Our trepidation proved "unfounded," but not without reason and not without consequence.
Across the way in this small one-room restaurant were a middle-aged couple with blue bandannas tied around their necks. The man kept putting the bandanna up over his face, up to his nose. However, more daunting was the t-shirt he was wearing that read in big capitalized white-against-black letters: BLACK GUNS MATTER.
This was a "nice" restaurant per se and so it simply didn't make sense to me why anyone would sport this shirt in public or have bandannas on. Chelsea and I kept nervously glancing at them, hoping they were leaving soon.
Chelsea leaned over and told me, "If something happens, the back door is right behind us." Having been trained for years by NY subway propaganda, "If you see something, say something," I contemplated calling the police to report these suspicious characters. But I balked, I bet on the notion that these people were simply expressing themselves, uncaring to the idea that they were stirring panic among patrons.
Being from Michigan, my wife reassured herself by saying it was likely more reminiscent of the culture she grew up in and not a reflection of the more liberal areas we live in. Her brother-in-law once told her "Only in New York and California do you have folk who don't equate freedom to the right to own your own gun."
Regardless, we were uncomfortable and I was perturbed and disturbed by the inciting. I suggested that maybe these were bikers, thus the bandannas. Alas, neither of us had noticed a motorcycle of any kind when we walked in.
Luckily, this out-of-place couple, soon left without incident and we tried to enjoy a rare night out when we get to focus more on being foodies than parents.
Nonetheless, the moment made a great impact on me. It has compelled me to be more vocal about an issue that is stirring our nation.
I believe it is awful enough that I must be afraid of coming in and out of Grand Central every morning and every afternoon now. Thus, it is no strange coincidence that the front page of one of New York's most popular papers, the New York Post, reflected my emotions this morning reading FEAR ONLY FEAR.
Fortunately, The New York Times read my mind as well and published its first front-page editorial in nearly a century, calling for lawmakers to do more to ban the type of assault rifles used in the San Bernardino shootings and other mass shootings in the U.S. I couldn't agree more.
It's the least we can do. It makes me rather sad to know that we are so inept as a nation, so paralyzed by industry and archaic entitlement, and so utterly inane when it comes the question of what matters more—purported rights and materialism or life itself.
Here is an excerpt:
End the Gun Epidemic in America
BY THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD
DEC 4, 2015
It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.
All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper...
Read the full front page article:
