Shots Fired in Terminal 2

by William Hazelgrove

  I hear a wheezing whistle and wonder where it is coming from, and then I realize it is my own breath. I am sweating profusely and put my head down against the car, hearing the woman asking again to get in the man's car. I don't know where Callie, Careen, Clay, or Kitty are. I don't know if my family is alive or dead. I stare across the street at Terminal 1 and see a cop pull his gun and enter the terminal. There is a second gunman. This is a coordinated terrorist attack on the airport. This is my thought. The entire airport is under siege, and I realize then that no one in Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport is safe. Anyone could be shot at any time. I am hiding behind a car in Florida in fear that any moment I could be shot dead. The questions are out there now in the shimmering hot asphalt, but it really comes down to just one.

  How did we come to this?

  The right to bear arms is actually a liberal idea. I don't mean liberal versus conservative; I mean that the right to have a gun protects our Lockean rights granted to us in the Bill of Rights. Our right to free speech, our right to assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, is protected by the very arms we possess. This is to protect us against a tyrannical government that might be set on taking those rights away. This is how it was designed and it was very progressive for the time. The individual is empowered against the forces that would seek to imprison us. So where did this come from?

  Blame it all on the British. They gave us our distrust of all governments. I don't think about my right to bear arms. I don't think I am that different from other urban people in the United States who do not own guns. But I don't view the government with suspicion either, and that suspicion must be intertwined for all time with the Second Amendment. Distrusting the government is the prerequisite for fearing that the right to bear arms might be taken away any minute.

  Let's throw in the whole idea that we needed guns to fight the Indians, settle the West, kill bears, and hunt for food. The Indian threat is nonexistent, the West has been settled, the bears are gone, and we all buy our meat in plastic-sealed containers. So that leaves the British. The British were coming. The patriots knew this from Paul Revere's famous night ride that alerted towns along the way. Seven hundred British regulars under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith were marching toward Boston. They were headed for Lexington to destroy military supplies. They knew ammunition and muskets had been stored in root cellars and barns in the town, and they knew an unarmed militia was a militia that could not fight. The militiamen knew about the plan and moved their muskets and ammunition to different locations. At dawn in the town of Lexington, the armed patriots met the British but quickly fell back, overwhelmed by numbers and British discipline.

  After the colonists retreated, the redcoats divided into groups to search for weapons caches. At 11:00 a.m. on Concord's North Bridge, not far from Lexington, one hundred Regulars met four hundred armed militiamen.1 The colonists fired their flintlocks with sharp cracks, surprising the advancing British, who fell on the bridge. The British still believed in marching in formation, and this stopped their march onto the bridge. The redcoats fell back, with the militiamen sniping at them the whole way. The armed colonists reloaded and fired on the retreating British soldiers. The militiamen were good shots after years of hunting in the wilderness. These were people who lived by their guns for hunting, protection, and policing, and now they were using them to repel a tyrannical government. The liberal idea had arrived; freedom would be protected by force.

  The British actually gave the Americans two things when it came to guns. One was an inalienable right to bear arms and the second was a reason to bear arms. The British illuminated the concept that a populace without arms was at the mercy of a tyrannical government. When James Madison sat down with others to write the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, there was nothing radical about the Second Amendment.2 Of course people would bear arms, and the reason went back to British law.

  The English Bill of Rights of 1689 allowed “the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law” and forbade the king to have “a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament.”3 The English were very keen on citizenry keeping order. After the town gates were locked for the night the citizenry were the only ones between anarchy and order. The English went further and said its citizenry were to be “sufficiently weaponed.”4 When the colonists came to America, they carried with them the English Bill of Rights and had it in mind as they tinkered with the idea of revolution.

  The English were not fools. They wrote laws to compel the citizenry to take up arms or to raise “a hue and cry” against all those who would threaten order. Citizens in 1285 were not only expected to do the policing but also to contribute arms for the local militia.5 The militia men were expected to keep their weapons in good order and in private hands. And there was some “arms control” in merry old England. In 1541, a statute stated that only those who made over one hundred pounds a year could own a crossbow or a gun except in times of war.6 The law made a connection between money and being trustworthy. But if the realm was threatened then everyone was expected to arm themselves.

  At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, one objective was to give the federal government the power to raise a standing army for protection. The Anti-Federalists greeted this with alarm. Wasn't this the very thing they had fought against in the Revolution? Weren't the British the poster children for the ravages and oppression a standing army could force upon its people? James Madison countered by inserting an amendment in the Bill of Rights that would ensure militias would not be disarmed: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”7

  The Second Amendment is a hedge against a centralized government and gives the people the power through arms to fight that government if it becomes tyrannical. William Blackstone, who wrote a commentary on the English Bill of Rights, explained that this power given to the people through arms was only to be used as a final solution when “the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.”8

  Alexander Hamilton elucidated this concept of self-defense in 1788: “If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all, inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of fellow citizens.”9

  Some would argue that it is wrong to interpret the Second Amendment as a call to arms against an oppressive government, that the Constitution inserted an elaborate system of balances and checks against such power, which, more than armed insurrection, was the balance of power the framers of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers intended. But many of the debates during the ratification of the Constitution centered on the fear that the federal government might militarily take over the states and that the only protection was an armed citizenry.10

  The Second Amendment for a lot of people came down to a point of grammar: is there an amplifying clause in the Second Amendment or a qualifying clause? Do we have the right to bear arms so we can form a militia, and so that collective right doesn't exist if we don't need a militia? That would be a qualifying clause. Or do we need a militia always, and so the right to bear arms is always necessary and inviolate? That would be an amplifying clause. It really comes down to semantics. The Right to Bear Arms through history has been interpreted as an individual right regardless of a need for a militia.

  We don't trust the government. Again, blame the English. The colonists arrived in the New World equipped with a legal framework and an attitude of anti-authoritarianism that fueled the upheavals of the seventeenth century, the English Civil War of 1642, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It was this distrust of central power that resulted in the English Bill of Ri
ghts of 1689.11

  When the British clamped down on the freedoms of their colonists, our English right to bear arms became our American right to bear arms. The first clause is an amplifying clause if we go with our history. We were Englishmen who needed our arms to fight our oppressor and protect our Lockean (life, liberty, and property) and God-given rights. This is where the right to bear arms becomes a liberal idea because arms protect our Lockean rights.12 Every American colony did form a militia, which was then codified in 1792 in the Military Act. Essentially, we took the English right and made it our own, and our government could depend on its citizenry to look after themselves against any threats.

  The tradition is one of safeguarding rights by force. The English right to bear arms was interpreted as an individual right, as was the right to bear arms in the American Constitution. It is against our oppressors we armed ourselves and still arm ourselves. The Second Amendment is the right to protect ourselves against those who would take our rights away. Americans would begin their new country as a heavily armed populace suspicious of any centralizing power. Our distrust and suspicion would become the legacy of a people with one finger always on the trigger.

  The yellow “Don't Tread on Me” flags reflect this distrust. The populist movement that put Donald Trump in office reflects this distrust. The fact that the Second Amendment was used as a cudgel against Hillary Clinton as Donald Trump became the protector of the right to bear arms against all who would threaten that right shows that it is a fear easily exploited by a populace that sees black copters coming any moment. Basements are well stocked with provisions, arms, and ammo all over the rural countryside of America. The fact that the government has arms and an army and an air force makes the Second Amendment dearer to the hearts of men and women who see themselves as the last line of defense between liberty and tyranny. At last count we now have 300 million guns in America. We are a people who trust no institution and no government, and we prove it by arming ourselves to the teeth.

  To say one is for or against the Second Amendment is ridiculous and shows no understanding of the Constitution. The Second Amendment is intertwined with free speech and the free press and the right of assembly. It is like saying you are for or against the First Amendment or the Third. It doesn't matter. It is here to stay. The Second Amendment protects those rights by the design of the Founding Fathers. Gun control or lack of gun control has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. If the Second Amendment were an engine, the issue wouldn't be whether to take the engine out, because then the car wouldn't run. The issue would be how to adjust the engine to run more smoothly.

  Ernest Hemingway's definition of courage was grace under pressure. This was what the matadors had, which fascinated the author so much that he described it in Death in the Afternoon and other books. This was what propelled Teddy Roosevelt to leave his job as undersecretary of the Navy and lead a group of cowboys up San Juan Hill in the Spanish American War. Courage goes against the instinct for survival, and courage will be demonstrated in this shooting by people who will put their life on the line for others.

  We like to think that when a moment comes to test us we will have some “grace under pressure.” I would have liked to have stood my ground. I have been brought up to believe that courage is a manly trait, yet I ran like the hero in Stephan Crane's Red Badge of Courage. The main character always wondered what he would do under fire in the Civil War and then he found out. He ran like a rabbit all the way to the back lines. This happened a lot in the Civil War as men experienced their baptism of fire. Our DNA has been handed down to us by our Stone Age ancestors, who lived by fleeing from larger or stronger animals. We come from a long line of fleers, but I still wanted to think I could have some of Hemingway's type of courage.

  Ducking behind the car and staring at Terminal 1, I have only the overwhelming urge to run as fast as I can. Men who have heard gunfire directed at them in battle can overcome this, I believe, but I have never been in the military and this is my baptism of fire. I am still breathing so fast I can hear my breath outside myself and I feel sweat running off my brow and pasting my shirt tightly to my chest. My backpack, with my computer and books, is still on. I have run with a ten-pound weight on my back and hadn't realized it. Now I am behind the car in the hot Florida sun with my body still in a supercharged state.

  A primitive fight-or-flight response had taken over my body at the sound of the gunfire. My body had one objective, which snuffed out my conscious thoughts with one primordial objective—survival. I was one with soldiers, victims of violent crimes, civilians caught in wars, animals that see or smell a predator or sense a life-threating situation. The body's physical reaction to severe stress can save your life. Your body pumps out catecholamines, especially norepinephrine and epinephrine, giving both animals and humans extra strength and speed to react to threats by fighting or fleeing.

  I stare at Terminal 1. People all around me are crouched down, as though this were footage from Iraq or some other war-torn country. People are hiding behind cars, lying on the sidewalk, huddling against the building, or standing behind policemen, who have their guns drawn. No one knows where the shooter is. Police protocol, dictated ever since the Columbine shooting, is to go in and disarm an active shooter. The police had done this easily with Esteban Santiago, who was lying on the ground with his Walther 9mm beside him when they arrived. The police assumed they had a lone-shooter situation, and they had let the entire airport know the situation was under control. Clearly it isn't.

  Though we don't know it then, the Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport, in the moment those four shots were fired, had changed into “an active shooter” situation. This means that the police don't know where the shooter is, and no one is safe. You never want to be in an “active shooter situation.” It means that you could be shot at any moment. And to make matters worse, there is a high-rise parking garage at my back, with perfect sniper lairs around every parked car. In fact, many police officers are now crouched down with their guns pointed toward the garage. Many pictures will surface later showing the police crouched and staring, with guns drawn. It is the parking garage they are staring at.

  The thought that this is a terrorist attack on a major American airport is immediate when the four shots went off. The CNN “Lone Shooter” that my wife and I and my kids had been depending on for our sense of safety is now out the window. This is an attack with multiple gunmen and we are all targets and I don't know where my wife, two daughters, or my son are. I take out my phone and text Kitty. It is like texting underwater. My shaking finger keeps hitting the wrong keys. “Where R U,” I finally manage to text. I notice the phone isn't sending, and I flash back to 9/11 and all the other mass shootings where cell coverage is nonexistent because too many people are trying at once to locate loved ones.

  I stare at Terminal 1 again, seeing the people hiding under luggage carriers and behind trashcans outside the door. The thought that my daughters, my son, or my wife could be in there bleeding to death or worse is surreal and horrible. I know then I have to go back in.

  My heart rate and breathing are still that of a sprinter as I run back across the street thinking that I could be shot at any minute. I run like all those movies I have seen—bent over, zigzagging as I cross into the shade of the building and head back into Terminal 1. I go through the sliding doors and find myself in a vacant airplane hangar. That is the feeling anyway. The terminal is a silent, vast space that has been suddenly evacuated, and I am staring at a sea of suitcases, purses, shoes, flip-flops, lunches, bottled water, earbuds, phones, trash, wallets, glasses, earrings, keys, a comb, a lighter, cigarettes all scattered on the floor. Everything is left as if a ship had sunk and this was an image of the final moment. I look around fully expecting to see a shooter with a gun. The counters and kiosks are empty. The United counter is deserted. Later I will find out that people are hiding on the floor behind the counters thinking I could be a shooter. I see no one and feel relief that I have not f
ound my family in the horrible conditions that exist one terminal over. They have not been shot in the human avalanche that carried us all outside. I look over to where we had been sitting and see our luggage piled up. I see the bag of granola and the ice water I had bought. I see some earbuds. But over everything is an eerie stillness, and all I can hear is my own asthmatic breathing, my own supercharged body still in a state of heightened awareness that will last for the next eight hours.

  My phone buzzes and I pull it out, walking back toward the door. The text makes me feel like crying.

  “We R OK.”

  “Where R U?”