It’s hard to imagine someone being shot for knocking on a stranger’s door in Finland, Spain or Canada
n the past week, two people have been shot, in separate incidents, for making an innocent mistake. In Kansas City, Missouri, Ralph Yarl, 16, was shot in the head and critically wounded by 84-year-old Andrew Lester, whose door Yarl knocked on, in error. Yarl had come to pick up his younger brothers, who turned out to have been with friends at another house with a similar address.
The differences between that upsetting but not fatal experience and the recent shootings in Missouri and upstate New York are a measure of what has changed in a decade and a half. It’s hard to pinpoint the reasons why things have taken such a dire turn. The increase in gun violence has put us all on edge. An uptick in impulsive, explosive, trigger-happy rage ramps up the fear and paranoia that has us warily eyeing our fellow passengers and shoppers.
Obviously, we can scale down the violence and death by limiting access to guns, but there will always be guns. So how do we change the belief that it’s a good idea to shoot first and ask questions later? How do we repair this broken chromosome in our nation’s cowboy DNA?
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