SATURDAY, MAY 28 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C3
A 2018 Quinnipiac University
poll taken shortly after a school
shooting in Parkland, Fla. , found
that 45 percent of registered vot-
ers nationwide say they personal-
ly worried about being a victim of
a mass shooting. Another poll,
conducted around the same time
by the Pew Research Center,
found that 57 percent of teen-
agers were worried about the
possibility of a shooting happen-
ing at their school. In both polls,
worry was higher among Black
and Hispanic respondents.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) went to
Robb Elementary in Uvalde and
said what we needed to do was
“harden schools” — starting, per-
haps, by restricting their doors.
“One door that goes in and out of
the school,” Cruz said.
“Is this the moment to reform
gun laws?” a British reporter
from Sky News asked Cruz the
next day, and the senator’s face
fell in somber exasperation. This
wasn’t a moment for politics,
Cruz said.
“But why does this only happen
in your country?” the reporter,
Mark Stone, asked Cruz. “I really
think that’s what many people
around the world, just — they
cannot fathom. Why only in
America?”
Cruz called the reporter “a pro-
pagandist” and ended the inter-
view.
“I’m in Ukraine, a warzone,”
tweeted Politico reporter Christo-
pher Miller in the hours after the
shooting. “Russian attacks are
constant, airstrikes hit Ukrainian
cities overnight. But the first two
Ukrainians I saw when I woke up
today asked me about the Texas
elementary school shooting
where a gunman killed 19 chil-
dren.”
“Why?” the Ukrainians asked
him. “How?”
The lieutenant governor of
Texas had an answer, and a solu-
tion. “We are in a sick society,”
Dan Patrick said on Fox News,
and we can only be healed by
“turning to God.”
Last week, the company that
manufactured the gun used by
the Uvalde shooter tweeted a
photo of a toddler with a semiau-
tomatic rifle on its little lap.
“Train up a child in the way he
should go, and when he is old, he
will not depart from it,” said the
tweet, quoting the Book of Prov-
erbs. After the shooting, the com-
pany released a statement saying
it would keep the families of the
victims in its thoughts and
prayers.
Greg Abbott, the Republican
governor of Texas, looked at the
bright side of the situation. “The
reality is, as horrible as what
happened, it could have been
SHOOTING FROM C1
worse,” he said at a news confer-
ence.
“You said this was not predict-
able,” Texas gubernatorial candi-
date Beto O’Rourke (D) scolded
Abbott as he interrupted the
news conference. “This is totally
predictable when you choose not
to do anything.”
“I can’t believe you’re a sick son
of a bitch who would come to a
deal like this to make a political
issue,” an official retorted from
the stage.
The nation had gone 10 days
without a major mass shooting.
“America,” tweeted comedian
Daniel Van Kirk, “where you only
ever need half a flagpole.”
The memorials and funerals
for the victims of the May 14
shooting in Buffalo were happen-
ing as families in Uvalde waited
to get their cheeks swabbed so the
obliterated bodies of their chil-dren could be identified.
Some members of the media
began debating this week wheth-
er showing pictures of these dead
children could shake America out
of its stupor. Might we be jolted to
action if we show dead and blood-
ied children on the floors of their
schools?
“It’s time, with the permission
of a surviving parent, to show
what a slaughtered 7-year-old
looks like,” tweeted David Board-
man, who runs Temple Univer-
sity’s journalism school.
We saw what their parents
looked like.
A jittery cellphone video, taken
at the time of the shooting,
showed the parents of Uvalde
pleading with the police officers
in the parking lot outside of the
elementary school to save the
children who were inside being
killed.Fifty-nine seconds into the vid-
eo, a woman can be heard
screaming, “My daughter!” Her
voice is ripped raw. Eighty-seven
seconds in, a policeman tells the
group of parents that they are
“taking care of” the situation. A
man responds that the shooter
“ain’t dead yet.” A woman tells the
officers that her son is inside the
school. “If they’ve got a shot,
shoot him or something, f---!” she
says. “I’m going to go, I’m going to
f---ing go.” Two minutes into the
video, there is inchoate wailing.
Parents have fallen to their knees
on the pavement. Parents have
crumbled in the parking lot,
shrieking.
This week, students from Fair-
fax County to Shaker Heights,
Ohio, to Essex Junction, Vt.,
staged walkouts of their school to
protest political inaction on guns.
This week, Golden State War-riors Coach Steve Kerr pounded
the table at a pregame news
conference, excoriated Republi-
can senators for refusing to take
up a background-check bill
passed last year by the House of
Representatives, and bellowed
“We can’t get numb to this!” and
“It’s pathetic!” and “I’ve had
enough!”
Meanwhile, stock prices for
American’s largest guns and
ammo manufacturers climbed
this week: 8.1 percent for Smith &
Wesson Brands; 15.9 percent for
Ammo Inc.
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper
went to Uvalde and interviewed a
medical professional named An-
gel Garza, who described arriving
at the scene of the shooting and
meeting a little girl covered “head
to toe” in blood. He asked her if
she was hurt and she said no, but
her best friend had been shot andkilled while she was trying to call
the police. Garza asked the girl
her friend’s name. It was Amerie.
It was Garza’s 10-year-old daugh-
ter.
“That’s how you learned,” Coo-
per said. Eleven seconds of si-
lence followed, punctuated only
by Garza’s sob.
Garza told Cooper that the
phone Amerie had used to try to
call the police was a gift she had
received for her birthday two
weeks before. He said she had
always been afraid of strangers,
and a shooting would have been
the thing she feared the most. He
said she was a good girl. He said
she always listened to her mom
and dad. He said she always
brushed her teeth.
America: where last year
52 percent of adults supported
stricter gun control, according to
Gallup, leaving nearly half who
want either less strict laws or the
status quo.
America: where residents own
more guns per 100 residents than
any other country in the world:
120.5, which is more than twice as
many as the next highest country,
which is Yemen.
America: where there are more
guns than humans.
The same day as the Uvalde
shooting, a 14-year-old in Boul-
der, Colo., was arrested for threat-
ening to shoot up a middle school.
The same day as the Uvalde
shooting, a second-grader in Sac-
ramento brought a gun and a
magazine of bullets to school. The
weaponry was found and confis-
cated “due in large part to the
bravery and awareness of the
students who came forward and
alerted staff,” the Sacramento
school district wrote to parents,
urging everyone to “work togeth-
er and use this incident as a
reminder of the importance of
‘See something, say something.’ ”
On Wednesday morning, less
than 24 hours after the shooting
in Uvalde, a business owner in a
suburb of Dallas saw a teenager
walking past the Petco and the
Target, holding what looked like a
rifle, heading in the direction of
Berkner High School. Police were
dispatched. Nearby schools were
alerted. In the teenager’s car, offi-
cers found what appeared to be
an AK-47-style pistol and a replica
AR-15 style rifle. The teenager
was arrested and charged with
unlawfully carrying weapons in a
school zone.
On Thursday a high school in
Prince George’s County went into
lockdown for almost two hours
after police were alerted to a
student with a gun on campus.
Prince George’s County Execu-
tive Angela D. Alsobrooks
summed up this endless moment
in America: “These are horrifying
times we are living in.”Only in America: Waitingfor the next mass shootingSARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST
A private prayer circle took place after a vigil in Uvalde, Tex., on Wednesday, the day after a gunman killed 21 people at a local school.size the frame or how big the role,
once Liotta was on screen, he
owned it by sheer force of intimi-
dation.
That combination of intimida-
tion and attraction defined Liot-
ta’s career-making performance
as gangster Henry Hill in 1990’s
“Goodfellas,” where he carried the
movie and held his own with the
likes of Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci
and Paul Sorvino. He went from
fresh-faced Irish American kid to
coked-out informer with convinc-
ing dissolution, his eyes receding
to coal-black points as his charac-
ter’s moral core shriveled. In be-
tween those two extremes, he
played the glamour of the role
with equally believable cool:
When his future wife Karen (Lor-
raine Bracco) apologetically ex-
plains in a voice-over that watch-
ing him beat the daylights out of a
bullying neighbor turned her on,
viewers could be forgiven for feel-
ing the same unsettling combina-APPRECIATION FROM C1 tion of revulsion and fascination.
Liotta went on to make dozens
more movies — he delivered a
particularly impressive turn in
1997 ’s “Cop Land,” and played a
credible Frank Sinatra in the TV
movie “The Rat Pack” (1998) —
but most observers agree that hedidn’t have the career he de-
served. It was gratifying to see
him more often in recent years,
sometimes making fun of his own
frightening persona, other times
playing into it with grace and
traces of self-aware humor. His
portrayal of a ruthless (whatelse?) divorce lawyer in Noah
Baumbach’s “Marriage Story”
(2019) was a fine return to form,
and a tantalizing promise of what
Liotta might be heading toward
in the last few chapters of his
career.
No matter what Liotta did — a
guest shot on a sitcom, a cameo in
a pulpy action thriller, a support-
ing role in a well-heeled indie —
he never lost the ability to startle,
by his presence alone. That initial
frisson of threat and volatility
would give way to delight (“Ah, it’s
Ray Liotta!”), but it was always a
jolt nonetheless. The starmaking
machinery of Hollywood can try
as hard as it can, but no one can
fake what Ray Liotta had: the
ability to come out of nowhere,
seize our attention and earn our
emotional allegiance, not by how
he acted but by who he continued
to be when he acted.
“Hi, baby. Surprise.”
Ray Liotta never stopped sur-
prising, right up until he left the
stage much too soon.Ray Liotta delivered one of film’sgreatest breakout performancesGARETH CATTERMOLE/GETTY IMAGES/BFI
R ay Liotta attends the U .K. premiere of “Marriage Story” at the 2019 BFI London Film Festival. The
actor, who died this week, played a ruthless divorce lawyer in the Noah Baumbach movie.No matter what Liottadid, he never lost theability to startle, by hispresence alone.Dear Amy : My
son and his
girlfriend just
announced their
plans to marry
this year. It is the
first marriage for both of them,
and we couldn’t be happier.
We were very surprised,
however, when they asked us
what contribution we would
make toward the wedding.
I had always understood that
wedding expenses were the
responsibility of the bride’s
family, and said so, but they said
that was an “out-of-date” custom.
We were blindsided and don’t
know how to respond.
Her family is generously giving
them a healthy sum to use for
wedding, honeymoon, etc. This
should be more than enough to
cover the wedding costs.
We will host the rehearsal
dinner (a traditional groom's
family responsibility) and plan
on giving them a nice check for a
wedding gift (but not as much as
the parents of the bride’s
contribution).
A couple of years ago, we gave
our son most of the down
payment on the house they now
live in together and feel we have
done our share already. That gift
was roughly double the funds the
bride's family is giving.
Are we hopelessly out of date?
How do we manage their
expectations without causing ill
feelings?
— Dated Parents
Parents : The marrying couple
should be responsible for
financing their wedding. One
way to do this is to ask both sets
of parents to contribute and then
to plan for the wedding they can
afford.
Your son and his fiance may
seem especially bold when it
comes to the “asking,” but that’s
all they are doing — they are
asking.
All they need from you is an
answer: “In addition to the sum
we gave you for your down
payment, we'll pay for the
rehearsal dinner. We were also
planning to give you a check for
name the amount as a wedding
gift, and if you would like it now
rather than later, let us know.”
This couple is responsible for
managing their own
expectations. This is “adulting”
of the first order.Dear Amy : This has happened
several times since my husband
died:
I live alone, and people drop
off food for me. This happens
without my knowledge, so I can’t
tell them in advance that there
are many foods I can’t eat.
I am very grateful that they
think of me, but I just don’t really
understand the concept. I am not
a shut-in, I am not ill, and I could
certainly stand to lose some extra
weight.
Today a co-worker knew I was
coming home from a weekend
away and dropped off a very
spicy stew. She texted me to say
she had left it at my house.
I opened the container and
immediately knew that I would
be sick for days if I ate it. How do
I politely thank her but get the
message across that I could not
eat it?
For the people who feel the
need to give others food, please
talk to them first to find out what
they eat and if they have room to
store the food!
— OverfedOverfed : I can’t imagine how the
concept of bringing food to a
bereaved person has escaped
you. Every region and culture I
can think of contains a version of
this practice, and although youmake a strong case for the
burden of receiving food when
you haven’t asked for it, and a
very good point regarding the
challenge of receiving food you
cannot consume, I hope you
understand that there is a real
spirit of generosity behind this
effort.
You can thank your co-worker
using a version of this: “Thank
you so much for dropping off the
container of stew! I am so
touched that you thought of me.
Unfortunately for me, I can’t eat
anything spicy, but oh — it smells
so good. If I can find room in my
freezer, I’m going to save it for a
hungry guest. Let me know if
you’d like me to return the
container. I'm doing well right
now, and I am so grateful for your
thoughtfulness, but fortunately
for me, I'm all set for food.”Dear Amy : Your response to
Grandpa bringing his grandkids
cookies when he watches them
was ridiculous.
You completely attacked his
character, saying he's lazy and
implying that he may exert his
“power” in other ways.
That was over the top and a bit
dramatic. Don’t be so lazy with
the name-calling.
— DisgustedDisgusted : This grandfather’s
choice was to ignore the explicit
wishes of the children’s parents.
So yes, he seemed like a lazy and
disrespectful caregiver.Amy's column appears seven days a
week at washingtonpost.com/advice.
Write to [email protected] or
Amy Dickinson, P.O. Box 194,
Freeville, N.Y. 13068. You can also
follow her @askingamy.© 2 022 by Amy Dickinson distributed by
Tribune Content AgencyOur son is planning to get m arried
a nd is asking w hat we’re contributing
Ask Amy
AMY
DICKINSON
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