The producer nods to the host at the other end of the green room. Rick Knox is conventionally handsome, perfectly shaven, and covered in pancake makeup. He’s also known as a conservative-leaning fireball against whose sharp bullshit detector no one is safe.
I wonder if that’s why Darrow dropped out of this slot and sent me.
I get miked up and Knox does a brief drive-by to say hello, but he’s distracted by another producer with a clipboard talking a mile a minute. I follow directions to my swivel chair pulled up to Rick’s angled desk, then watch as the Knox on Politics title sequence animates on the monitors.
The lead-in segment begins to play. Old footage shows me bent and kneeling, my shoulders convulsing in sobs as I press my forehead to Ethan’s headstone in anguish. I’m transported to the cold December day at Cascade Ridge Cemetery five years ago.
I can’t unsee this image. I can’t. But being smacked in the face with it so early in the morning sends my stomach into total revolt and I leap from the chair and run to the side of the set, finding a trash can I can dump my guts into.
It comes up in thin, yellowish waves. There was little more than mineral water and coffee inside me, and a chasm of hurt. I look around wildly, absolutely blowing this interview before it’s even started, and a black-clad producer rushes up to me with an uncapped water bottle.
“Drink this.” He taps a button on the box on his belt and speaks quickly into his microphone, then turns to me. “Can you go back? Right now?”
I look across the set to where Knox is poised beneath blazing lights. The monitors continue rolling—images of the Willamette Mall where Seth and Ethan were shot, a montage of our family photos, and more tape of the aftermath of other shootings across America.
I don’t have to do this.
I can call in sick. Nobody would dispute me.
And yet, I have to do this.
For Seth and Ethan. For the victims at Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Fort Hood, Columbine, Aurora, Omaha, and Marysville.
For Trey and Mama Bea and Trey’s brother, shot in the streets before he even graduated high school.
For Jared, who told me the only candidate he’d want for Conover is one with a spine.
And for me. I have to do this for me. My opportunity is now.
I take another swig from the water bottle and stride back across the stage to my chair. I give Knox a tight smile and a nod. Bring it.
***
“I think we can agree that gun legislation is going to be one of the most contentious issues of the 2016 presidential election,” Knox says, “so I’d like to hear more about what you’d like to see the candidates do.”
Damn. Can’t a girl even get a warm-up question?
I smile like I’ve been dying to answer this question all day.
“Any meaningful gun legislation needs to start with the outcomes we intend to produce,” I say. “And so when I say I want greater accountability in ownership, I mean that I think every responsible gun owner needs to have a vested interest in keeping these weapons out of the hands of criminals.”
I go on to explain my proposed legislation, including mandatory reporting of gun thefts, penalties for failing to properly store and secure weapons, and tighter standards on private party sales to ensure guns aren’t sold to people who would otherwise be banned from buying them from traditional retail outlets.
“That sounds like a lot of red tape to me,” Knox says, and I hate him for his smirk, his pancake makeup, his condescending air. “It sounds like you’re making it a lot harder for average people to maintain their Second Amendment rights.”
“Not at all. I come from a hunting family. My late husband hunted duck and deer. But I’m also keenly aware that forty-two percent of mass shootings perpetrated in the last five years involved a firearm the shooter could not legally own.”
“Then you’ve proven my point. Criminals will always find a way to kill people.”
“No, you’ve proven mine. When we work together to lock up weapons properly, or to make buyers go through the necessary checks that are far less rigorous than even getting a driver’s license, we make it harder for them to access it.”
Knox frowns. “You can’t control for crazy.”
“Then what do you do? Do you give up and throw open your school doors to anyone who’d like to walk in with a semiautomatic weapon? No. You figure out lockdown procedures and police response. You implement the See Something/Say Something campaign. You fight like hell.”
“And what’s to say any of this works?” Knox sneers. “Can you prove all of these little laws are actually making us safer?”
“That’s just it, Rick. The silence is your only proof. Today is your proof, because here we are talking gun violence and showing tape from five years ago rather than watching something unfold today. Every little thing we do, every bit of violence we prevent, is something we’re not going to see on the national news. And I’ll take that silence any day.”