Red and blue states mourn gun violence differently

As a CNN law enforcement analyst since 2017, I have experienced the unfortunate exercise of paid work travel to scenes of multiple horrific incidents highlighting man’s inhumanity to fellow man. Beginning with the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history on the Las Vegas Strip on Oct. 1, 2017 at the Route 91 Harvest music festival, I have encountered it all.

Retiring from the FBI in 2016, I felt adequately prepared to witness brutality firsthand. I had served in combat zones, investigated innumerable crime scenes, and peered over more chalk outlines of murdered human beings than I care to acknowledge.

I’ve been on-hand for the aftermath of the Las Vegas tragedy, followed by tragedies in Sutherland Springs, Texas (26 churchgoers dead and another 20 wounded), Parkland, Florida (14 students and three teachers dead), Santa Fe, Texas (eight students and two teachers dead), and others.

What I have learned during my cross-country treks to evaluate and analyze mass shootings is this: Red and blue states view gun violence distinctly differently.

I was introduced to media darlings Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg before the world knew their names. Both these gun control activists burst onto the scene in the wake of the Parkland shooting. Sheepish and appearing reluctant to appear on-camera, I witnessed them gently prodded to describe their experiences for CNN at our Parkland location shoot.

Gonzalez currently boasts 1.6 million Twitter followers. Her schoolmate, Hogg, the son of a retired FBI agent, has just under 1 million. Similar to 16-year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg, both Gonzalez and Hogg revel in lecturing adults (particularly Republican lawmakers) on what they should be doing to keep schools safe. On location in Parkland, I watched their legends grow, especially when Democratic politicians such as Rep. Ted Deutch showed up to help prop up their efforts. Hogg, in particular, enjoys taunting GOP politicians on Twitter and in fiery speeches to adoring gun control audiences, viewing Republicans as the convenient foil in the universal, nonpartisan effort to keep our schools safe.

But my experience on location in the aftermath of the Santa Fe High School shooting, just three months after the Parkland massacre, was decidedly different.

It was late in the evening of May 18, 2018, as the CNN crew set up just down the road from the high school that was still roped-off with police tape. In between on-camera appearances, I wandered inside a convenience store to grab a quick snack.

“Hey, CNN,” a grizzled old man wearing a camouflage shirt snapped, as I waited patiently in a short line, my CNN identification badge clearly visible, clipped to my belt, “don’t distort what just happened.”

I turned and smiled. “Never, brother. We’re only here to tell the story.”

“Well, tell it right,” he snarled. “No B.S. This ain’t about guns. It’s about a piece of s— who decided to hurt innocent folks. Don’t argue on your television cameras to take my guns, mister. We here in Texas appreciate the Second Amendment. Hope you do as well. We clear?”

I smiled and nodded. He held the door open for me as I headed back out to our location.

No one can accuse me of failing to see that there are loopholes in our gun laws that demand attention. After the Vegas shooting, I wrote about them. But to pretend that there does not exist a huge chasm between how red and blue America view mass shootings and culpability for it is to be purposely head-in-the-sand.

In their 2019 review of America since 1974, Fault Lines, historians Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer noted that in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in December 2012, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA “used the incident to argue that the nation actually needed more guns, not fewer.” Critics of the NRA and red America predictably howled.

But weren’t “good guys with guns” what undoubtedly saved countless lives at the West Freeway Church of Christ on Sunday morning?

And therein lies the divide. Some folks in blue America refuse to acknowledge this, much in the same way that many in the media gleefully leap to condemn attacks linked to white supremacy while cautiously treading when the perpetrator of a violent hate crime is determined to be an African American or a Muslim.

The media has a cynical, partisan narrative to push and inconvenient facts often get in the way.

Anti-gun advocates such as Shannon Watts, who founded Moms Demand Action in the wake of Sandy Hook, typically leap into action after every gun tragedy, decrying the gun lobby and Second Amendment proponents. In another of her series of tone-deaf social media attacks, she attempted to blister Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton this weekend for daring to tweet condolences to those grieving after the White Settlement church shooting.

In Shannon Watts’s worldview, “guns in churches” are the problem. This, despite armed citizens interdicting the heinous gunman within five seconds, preventing further bloodshed.

Therein lies our red-blue divide. The Left feels that inanimate objects are the cancer that requires excising. The Right hews to personal responsibility and individual freedoms, buttressed by the Second Amendment. As we move closer to the 2020 election cycle, these items will find themselves front and center on the debate stage.

Let’s all hope that we can serve our fellow citizens as did Jack Wilson, the former sheriff’s deputy who was lawfully armed and diligently trained for just such an event when he courageously stopped the West Freeway Church of Christ shooter with one shot.

The 2020 election will ultimately be one shot to define us as a nation.

James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John’s University.

Correction: This piece previously described Jack Wilson as a former FBI agent. He is not, he is a Hood County Sheriff’s deputy.