“Honey, be careful.”

“You be careful!” Diane shouted to her husband, Will, as she closed the door behind her.

It was the everyday mantra taking the place of I love you, which they formerly said at their every parting. They both would have preferred to remind one another of their love, wishing and hoping that they could say that the last thing they’d ever voiced was the expression of their love. But they’d both come to realize that they would prefer to actually see one another again, than to simply be satisfied with a worthless thought – worthless in the sense that their love had been murdered.

Massachusetts was the last of America’s fifty states to succumb to the Supreme Court’s dictum concerning the nation’s 2nd Amendment to the Constitution – the right to bear arms. The Court ruled that no authority could regulate firearms. Within a decade every control was removed. America was the Wild West with most people openly carrying, whether in holsters or slung over their shoulders. The rest of the world had already conceded to various gangs, dictatorships, and the onslaught of cheap weaponry.

Even teenagers carried weapons. Parents who balked at Junior not packing soon understood that the child would lose his, or her, pocket money to the scrawniest punk who didn’t mind drawing his gun and threatening with it if he, or she, thought there would be no witnesses.

“Dad, I need a nine!” Jimmy slammed his backpack to the table top. “Today was the last day to pay for the field trip I was wantin’ to go on. And that Martin kid knew it.”

“Were there witnesses?” Will asked.

“Sure. Tom, and Frog, but they won’t back me up. They think that Martin, or some of his friends, will get ‘em some day. Prob’ly would too.” Jimmy yanked off his jacket and threw it toward the coat rack, walking over to pick it up from the floor as he felt his father’s glare. “What makes me mad is that I could whip him in a fair fight!”

Will had no answer. Children such as the Martin kid had no real concept of death, and would flee in seconds, leaving mayhem in their wake. After all, there were still laws against murder; but that would not bring back his son, even if the Martin kid was caught and punished.

Hearing no response, Jimmy stomped upstairs to his room where he would spend the next two hours doing homework.

Diane returned home with groceries. She and Will shared a kiss when they crossed paths in the mudroom as Will was going into the garage to help bring it all in.

“Well I’ve seen it all now,” Diane said as Will returned, his fists full of plastic sack straps. “The ice cream place up the street has armed guards walking around the parking lot just like it was a bank or grocery store. And his AR wasn’t over his shoulder, either. He was carrying it like he was ready to shoot it.”

“I saw it with my own eyes!” Joline slammed the front door. Joline, Diane and Will’s oldest child had to park her car in the driveway, since the third garage stall housed Will’s boat.

For dramatic effect, Joline anticipated her prompt, which, Diane finally proffered. “What did you see?” she asked.

Waiting for both parents to give attention, Joline, full of histrionics, began her rant. “It was in the parking lot, not B lot where I park, but the A lot. I was walking to my car. Like I always do. It was a little out of my way because Laurie’s car was closer, and…”

Will sighed a little louder that he’d intended, wishing Joline would make her point, but knowing that to try to hurry her along would have a profoundly opposite affect.

Joline snapped a look to her father, resuming her animated narrative. “This guy was unlocking his truck. He had one of those old ones that he actually used a key and he was juggling his stuff.” Seeing her mother’s shoulders shrug, Joline continued her tale. “Another guy came up to him and asked if he could see his gun. Oh, they both had belt holsters. They were in front of us, so we, Laurie and I, had to see it. Well, the guy that was getting into his truck hesitated. Like he didn’t want to, you know, show him his gun. He started to open the truck door, but by then the other guy was in the way and he kept asking to see it, what kind was it? Like that.”

Both Will and Diane closed their eyes, knowing what was coming.

“Well… I don’t know who he was, but the guy with the truck finally went to pull out his gun. We saw it all the way, me and Laurie. We talked about it. The truck guy had his gun all the way out and the other guy pulled his out and just shot the truck guy. I mean he didn’t have to slide the chamber, or nothin’. I think it was one of those old time guns, like a revolver.”

“What did you do?” Diane asked.

“We got outta there. Laurie’s car was the next row over. We ran to it and both jumped in. I had Laurie drive me to my car.

“Were there other witnesses?” Will wanted to know.

“Oh, yeah lots of kids. Well, several. The guy was shouting ‘He drew first! He drew on me! There’s his gun!’ We were gone before anything else happened.”

“Oh dear,” Diane said as she wrapped Joline into her arms.

Will shrunk into himself before standing more erect. “Well, you did the right thing, Joline. It’ll be called self-defense, stand-your-ground. And even if you were to testify to what you heard, that wouldn’t change anything. His lawyer would plead snap decision, the dead man’s complaint.

“Diane shot Will a scolding look at his use of the words dead man.

+++

Congressman Noland heard Joline out, Joline’s diction rehearsed and perfected. Through a mutual acquaintance, a meeting had been arranged within the week.

“Mr. … Will. This is not the first time… not the first…” The Congressman choked back his emotions. “Sorry, I met with the parents of another… Well, anyway, thank you for coming in. I’ll do it. Despite all counsel to the contrary. I’ll do it.”

To his assistant Congressman Noland dictated what he wanted in the bill that he hoped would develop to a Constitutional Amendment:

• Universal gun licensing restricted to adults
• Universal background checks
• Restrictions on gun ownership with respect to mental capacity and conditions
• Waiting periods before possession of purchases
• Restrictions on military weapons
• Mandatory satisfactory completion of a gun safety course
• A weapons ban in, or near, schools, churches, theaters, or entertainment venues

The Congressman’s bill detailed each bullet point, as well as the several more matters.

“Uh, Sir,” the assistant began. Are you sure you…”

“Yes! We are a civilized people. It’s time we acted like it. I know this won’t stop murder, but it will turn some open warfare back to ordinary fistfights. It will save some. It would have saved Robert Dietrich, that young man just trying to go home from college.”

“But what chance does it have of passing?” the assistant asked, knowing the lack of courage among the other members of Congress.

“We have to do what we can, Doris. Pharoah wouldn’t let the Israelites go until calamity touched his own household, until it killed his own son. Maybe… We have to do what we can. If you don’t do what you know to do… well then, you…I… am as at fault as anyone who does the shooting.”

+++

Within a moment of the Congressman’s filing of his bill, a clerk was on a phone, notifying contacts of the proposal.

That evening, as the Congressman slowed to turn onto his street, four gunmen stepped up from both sides of the road, riddling the car and the Congressman with semi-automatic gunfire, four ARs emptied of their magazines.

The bill would die the death of all other un-seconded bills.