{"id":13914,"date":"2016-08-30T07:04:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-30T13:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=13914"},"modified":"2016-08-30T07:04:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-30T13:04:00","slug":"opinion-reflections-on-an-early-campus-shooting-spree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/08\/opinion-reflections-on-an-early-campus-shooting-spree\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Reflections on an early campus shooting spree"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Grimland\"<\/a>

Dave Grimland<\/p><\/div>\n

Fifty years ago this month, Charles Whitman climbed the\u00a0tower at the University of Texas in Austin and began to kill\u00a0people. I was in my first year of graduate school\u2014it would be\u00a0the first time anyone tried to shoot me. It was Aug. 1, 1966. I\u00a0was 22 years old.<\/p>\n

I was studying mass communications and working as a\u00a0television production specialist at KULR, the university\u2019s\u00a0educational television station before it became a part of what
\nwe now know as our public television system. I would join\u00a0the broadcast staff later that year as a member of the nighty news team.<\/p>\n

I had been on my way to my apartment for lunch when I\u00a0heard the first shots and immediately returned to the station. The location of the mass communications department was\u00a0just below the university library tower on which an\u00a0engineering student had taken a defensive position.<\/p>\n

No one knew anything about Charles Whitman then but the\u00a0nation went on alert for any news about what would become\u00a0the first attack on innocent people on a college campus.
\nSixteen people would die that day.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to remember how unusual this was. We now\u00a0hear almost daily of killings. Our world seems bent on self-destruction,\u00a0whether by politics or declared and undeclared
\nwars.<\/p>\n

The Texas Legislature recently passed a law allowing\u00a0students to carry weapons to defend themselves at school.\u00a0Instead of relying on the police, Texas students are assumed\u00a0to know what to do with guns. The national climate of fear\u00a0has meant that our politicians and media constantly remind\u00a0us of how we are always at risk. It soon becomes not just a\u00a0reminder but a grim reality.<\/p>\n

The National Rifle Association seems not to notice\u2014always telling us that it is not\u00a0people who kill but guns. It\u2019s a specious argument. Defense\u00a0of the Second Amendment has nothing to do with controlling\u00a0the sale of ammunition and guns. The men who wrote our Constitution could not have imagined the automatic rifle or\u00a0the IED. Given their recent experience with the American\u00a0Revolution, they were afraid of giving too much authority to a\u00a0strong federal government.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Back to that date in Austin: As I ran back to the mass\u00a0communications building, I knew that national commercial\u00a0broadcasters would be contacting our small station and\u00a0asking for film or television footage of the event.<\/p>\n

As I reached the building, Bill Arhos, the station manager,\u00a0saw me and asked that I find a crew and get a single\u00a0television camera in a position to record footage of Whitman
\non the tower. I found only one other member of the staff, Ken\u00a0Talbot, to help but we managed to get a single camera out of\u00a0the building.<\/p>\n

These were the days before small shoulder cameras were\u00a0available. I had to roll one of the large studio cameras\u00a0outside and position it on the small bridge between the
\nstation and the library tower. My hope was that I would be\u00a0able to find a man on the tower above me and get footage of\u00a0him firing at others.<\/p>\n

Ken helped me get the camera out but then realized that we\u00a0were much too visible for comfort and he left me alone to\u00a0struggle with getting the camera in position and aiming it\u00a0high enough to cover the top of the tower on which Whitman\u00a0was shooting. Just as I focused the camera and found the\u00a0grainy image of a person on the tower, the figure above me\u00a0raised his head over the tower guardrail and fired a shot at\u00a0me. I locked the camera in position and left it on to record\u00a0whatever followed, then ducked back into the studio and out\u00a0of danger.<\/p>\n

Later, when the police had killed Whitman, ABC radio news\u00a0called the station to ask for whoever had gotten the footage.<\/p>\n

The station did not have a communications link with every\u00a0staff member, but someone found me and told me to join the\u00a0manager in his office.\u00a0Someone from ABC was calling to tell me that ABC radio\u00a0was at that moment trying to get eyewitness accounts, and
\nsince I had been at the camera, they wanted me to tell them\u00a0what I had seen and done.<\/p>\n

I said I would, and in the 60\u00a0seconds that followed told them what had happened. The
\nman on the phone told me he would be mailing me a check\u00a0for my help and hung up.<\/p>\n

A week later, the check showed up in my station mailbox.\u00a0Twenty dollars for less than a minute\u2019s work\u2014I could see\u00a0thousands more if I stayed with broadcasting, but I had
\nalready applied to work for the United States Information\u00a0Agency and decided that I did not want a career as a news\u00a0broadcaster.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, my 28-year\u00a0career in the foreign service\u00a0would put me in front of many cameras and microphones\u00a0during my tours in Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Bangladesh and
\nIndia. The only money I would receive would be from my\u00a0salary as a diplomat.<\/p>\n

In July 2015, I published my first book, \u201cJourney to Ithaka,\u201d\u00a0about my diplomatic travels and adventures. I hope to\u00a0publish a second book this year and a third in 2018. But after
\nbeing the target of Greek Cypriot mobs in 1974 and 1975,\u00a0that day in Austin remains one that I will always remember\u00a0as the first time someone shot at me.<\/p>\n

It saddens me to realize that I no longer want to use my\u00a0guns. Montana remains a gun state, though with fewer\u00a0people needing to hunt for food. Now it\u2019s all about trophy
\nhunting and I have no interest in killing animals for their size.<\/p>\n

Having seen what guns can do and having lost a fine\u00a0ambassador killed in the line of duty, I can only wonder\u00a0whether I could ever kill a fellow human being.<\/p>\n

Dave Grimland has lived in Columbus since 1995, when he retired from the U.S. Foreign Service.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago this month, Charles Whitman climbed the\u00a0tower at the University of Texas in Austin and began to kill\u00a0people. I was in my first year of graduate school\u2014it would be\u00a0the first time anyone tried to shoot me. It was Aug. 1, 1966. I\u00a0was 22 years old. I was studying mass communications and working as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":13917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3864,1],"tags":[4893,2299,4894,4892],"class_list":["post-13914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-uncategorized","tag-charles-whitman","tag-national-rifle-association","tag-second-amendment","tag-university-of-texas","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}