Bullet points

The sound startled me even though I knew it was coming. The sheer volume coupled with the multiple directions was astounding. It’s New Year’s Eve in Little Rock and celebratory gunfire has become a sick tradition.

Mind you, gun violence is a problem anywhere. But that night, I couldn’t help but focus on the haphazard irresponsibility that seemed to cover every neighborhood.

This wasn’t the tragedy of targeted violence. This was the calamity of intentional indifference.

“What the …” I muttered under my breath as I walked across the school track a few days later. It was a clear January morning, the sun casting heat on my skin despite the low temperatures. A glint in the otherwise dull brick-red track caught my eye.

I toed the glint a little, working my foot back and forth across it. A small cylinder popped out of the rubber and rolled in a semi-circle. A bullet.

“Quit wearing comfortable shoes,” a friend told me when I groused about my find.

“What do my shoes have to do with this?”

“All school administrators have two things: sensible haircuts and comfortable shoes. I can’t help you with the hair, that’s just a thing you guys in the front office do. But ditch the comfortable shoes and you won’t walk around and see things you don’t want to see.” “That’s your best answer?” I asked. He scratched his head and pursed his lips, thinking. “No. I want to keep idiots and the violent away from guns. That includes those who would step on a porch and fire a few rounds in the middle of a city.”

Little Rock isn’t alone. Most cities across the nation deal with celebratory gunfire alongside everything else. Los Angeles has a “New Year’s Eve Gunfire Reduction Program.” Philadelphia, Baton Rouge, and Durham, N.C., have all addressed the issue.

LRPD has its hands full.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“And their driver’s licenses. If they shoot a gun in the air, they sure can’t be trusted to drive. They’re probably the ones racing around. And no landscaping,” he mused.

“Landscaping?”

“No leaf blowing. The folks who blow their leaves into the street thinking the mess will magically disappear have no regard for others, either. No guns, no cars, no leaf blowers.”

Icontinued grousing about the bullet that landed on a high school. “Look,” he continued, suddenly serious, “until everyone embraces the community feel of our city, it won’t change.

“We have to give a damn. We can’t risk the lives of strangers by shooting and racing at will. Until society grasps personal responsibility and sense of community—and realizes that they’re not competing characteristics—we’ll continue down this path of intentional indifference.

“The simple truth,” he said, “is that the individual is at his best when he’s part of something greater than himself. We’ve met the idiots and the idiots are us. When you discount the humanity in others, stupid things follow.”

I rubbed my hand through my haircut and nodded.

He’s right.