Club Q

On this Transgender Day of Remembrance, I remember Daphne, who I grew up with and knew by another name. She grew up, shared her real self with the world, and died by suicide.

I remember the at least 32 transgender and gender non-conforming people killed by violence in 2022.

And I remember the 5 people killed and 25 more injured by a gunman just after midnight in Club Q in Colorado Springs.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

As I write this, I am in a coffee shop at the mall. My kid and her friend are running around trying to blow $40. It’s too much money for them. An unimaginable amount of Cinnabons, chapstick, and squishies.

I feel safe here in this coffee shop. As I would in a church. A school. A neighborhood bar.

But in a Black church, a majority-Latinx school, and a gay bar, our children, our siblings of color, and our LGBTQ+ siblings were not safe.

What does it take for supposedly safe places to really be safe? I do not think it is the “good guy with a gun.” I reject the idea that safety means being personally armed and prepared to injure or kill. I reject the idea of a world in which only the strongest and most deadly can be safe.

Safety starts with the acknowledgment that none of us are safe until all of us are safe. We need to see, value, and protect everyone’s right to be who they are and be loved and cherished as they are.

We need courageous action to sensibly limit access to guns. I live a relatively coffee-centric life. And it’s easy to do so—there are just under 40,000 coffee shops in the US. There are nearly 60,000 firearms dealers in the US. I had absolutely no problem finding a coffee shop to hang out in this afternoon. Why do we need a third more firearms dealers than coffee shops? (And, BTW, there are way, way more firearms dealers than gay bars, which peaked in the late 80s at about 1,700 in the country.)

Yes, sensible gun laws will make our communities safer. And, something the Mayor of Colorado Springs told CNN stuck with me today:

One of the people in the bar last night—now heralded as a hero—took a handgun off the heavily-armed shooter and hit him with it.

He was close enough to swipe the gun off the gunman’s body. Then he was holding a gun. Why didn’t he shoot the gunman?

The news report didn’t say. Maybe he wasn’t sure how to shoot it. Maybe it was out of bullets.

Or.

Maybe it doesn’t take bullets to stop a shooter.

Maybe we don’t have to return hate for hate to protect those we love.