Editorial: Gunfire makes us all innocent bystanders
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Innocent bystanders.
It is a phrase of absolution. It says that in a particular instance, these people were not in the wrong.
On Oct. 15, three people were killed in Pittsburgh’s North Side when an argument in a parking lot jumped from a war of words to a gunfight.
Jacquelyn Mehalic, 33, was a waitress and a mom. She was on her way to work at 10 p.m. when the fight broke out. She was described as positive, outgoing and helpful. Betty Averytt, 59, was waiting in a nearby bus shelter.
They were not a part of the argument, according to police. They were collateral damage in a fight they didn’t start, didn’t escalate and didn’t finish.
And that is the problem with the eruption of deadly violence that has been growing in recent years.
Our communities are close quarters and gunfire can spray like a hose. An incident between a small group becomes a danger to a larger area when bullets are fired.
A bullet from a 9mm handgun can travel 2,400 yards once fired. That’s 24 football fields. It’s 1.3 miles. It will not stay confined to a parking lot dispute or a road rage incident or a domestic violence episode. It will cross streets and go through windows.
It will find the lady in the bus stop and the mom on her way to an overnight shift, or the baby in the back seat of a passing car and the kid riding a bike. Once fired, a bullet doesn’t care if the person it hits was the shooter’s target. It doesn’t care about involvement or guilt. It is 10 grams of lead and brass — all purpose and no intentions.
So if better control of weapons is not something that is possible because of politics, better ideas must come up to address the violence that leads to guns being pulled and bullets being fired.
“We will continue to do what’s necessary to keep the streets safe,” Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey said Monday.
But Mehalic and Averytt weren’t safe and they should have been. Neither were so many of the growing list of Allegheny County gun-related homicide victims.
Until there are ways to rein in the violence, all of us are innocent bystanders waiting to happen.