Earlier this week in the middle of the day in Colorado, an armed man (Ronald Troyke) ran up to an Arvada police officer (Officer Gordon Beesley), shooting him twice with a shotgun & killing him. Troyke then ran back to his truck (of course) to get his loaded AR-15 (again, of course). An armed onlooker (John Hurley) saw what had happened, hid behind a car, and shot & killed the shooter with his handgun. Very soon after, police arrived on the scene, saw an armed man, and immediately shot & killed John Hurley… Who had just killed Ronald Troyke… Who had just killed Officer Gordon Beesley… 

The Arvada police say that John Hurley had picked up the shooter’s AR-15 and was holding it when they arrived, though they have NOT released the body-cam footage from any of the officers arriving at the scene. They DID RELEASE a video where they hailed John Hurley as a hero while detailing their version of how this tragedy played out. That video includes some edited security camera footage of the day’s events. It is unclear whether the police officer who killed John Hurley interacted (told him to drop the gun or get on the ground) with him at all, but all signs point to that not happening. John Hurley has been photographed in a “We Are Change Colorado” T-shirt, a version of a 9/11 “truther” and anti-vax conspiracy theory group formed by Alt-right conspiracy theorist Luke Rudkowski. The group’s Facebook page has posts opposing gun safety laws…

The NRA and the GOP like to tell this fairytale that “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” They call John Hurley a “Good Samaritan” (a description with which I have some issues. The story of the Good Samaritan should not be used to describe someone who kills someone). They call John Hurley a “hero.” And maybe he is. He almost certainly kept other people from being shot & killed. Police found A NOTE Ronald Troyke had written that said, “Today I will kill as many Arvada officers as I possibly can” and “This is what you get, you are the people who are expendable.” 

What happened this week in Colorado (an open carry state) is obviously tragic… But for more reasons than simply because an officer and an armed bystander trying to do the right thing both lost their lives to gun violence. The real tragedy is that this country is so addicted to killing. We are a nation with more guns than people. And every new mass shooting… every new story of kids being gunned down in schools… every person whose life is cut short by these very killing tools — highly efficient at killing people from a distance — that we call guns… Every death is chalked up to some sort of demented sacrifice to this intangible idea of “freedom.” We have the power — as a community of people attempting to live together — to drastically reduce the number of firearms and deaths from these highly efficient killing tools. This idea that the only thing that can keep us safe from guns is MORE GUNS is a deadly lie told by very rich people who are trying to control us with FEAR.

There is finally an actual story of this etherial “Good Guy With A Gun,” and he was immediately killed because he had a gun. Is this the world we want to live in… One where we value the “right” to kill over the right to live? We are a nation who would rather live with the occasional classroom of twenty 1st graders being murdered than live without our precious guns.

It’s late, I’m tired, and I’m sad. I wish I could offer you some hope right now, but it seems right now I’m fresh out. It helps a little to write about it. Either way, thank you for reading. If you value this blog and my writing, and you’d like to become a patron, you can DO THAT HERE. If you feel like leaving a tip or buying me a drink, you can do that ON PAYPAL or by Venmo-ing to “chris-boeskool.” If you follow me ON FACEBOOK or ON TWITTER, I promise things aren’t always this depressing. Love you all…