‘We have to do better’

Son’s fatal shooting prompts father’s impassioned cross-country crusade

“He needed me to do what sons do for their fathers: bear witness that they’re substantial, that they’re not hollow, not ringing absences. That they count for something when little else seems to.” —Richard Ford, Canada

His wail was excruciating; his wail was on national television.

“Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA,” Richard Martinez screamed. He was talking about his son, Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez. In May 2014, along with five others on and near the University of California, Santa Barbara campus, Michaels-Martinez was killed by Elliot Rodger, who later shot himself in a parked car.1 

“They talk about gun rights,” Martinez spat into the mics. “What about Chris’ right to live? When will this insanity stop?” he asked.  “When will enough people say, ‘Stop this madness’?”

When indeed?

“It is stunning to me,” said President Barack Obama, two years earlier at a White House Q&A event, “that Congress did not take real action to tighten gun laws following the late 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. My biggest frustration so far is that this society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who can do just unbelievable damage.”

December 9, 2014 (Bixby, Oklahoma) 

The night is black. Blacker, as Randy Newman once said, “than a crow in a coal mine.” The stars, if they’re out, are cowed by the darkness. The houses are immaculate, as best I can see, but I can’t. Siri can’t find the place. I’m late. 

It’s a long walk up the brick steps. The sign on the door says ENTER.

Richard Martinez, a lawyer who served as a military police officer in the U.S. Army, is in Bixby tonight to speak. Among the guests are people from Planned Parenthood and Moms Demand Action, Democratic leaders and representatives, lawyers, community activists and artists. 

The hostess introduces Martinez and talks about Mary Fallin in a tank, crushing a Toyota, to celebrate the opening of a gun range that serves alcohol. 

We all laugh. Martinez, flummoxed, is waiting for the punch line.

We tell him there is none.  

He stands in front of a fireplace, facing the living room and the kitchen with plates of lox and expensive cheeses and crackers and wine.

It could be a party.

It’s not a party.

He has been invited to recollect, to inspire, to raise awareness. Since he became a father of a murdered son, Martinez goes from city to city doing this—talking about gun control and mental health and a nation’s insanity and spinelessness.

He is not easy to hear. It’s been six months since Chris was murdered. Martinez can now get through a talk without breaking down; still, he is not polished, his cadence is off.  He rambles, he repeats. He goes on too long. 

He is obviously exhausted. 

It doesn’t matter.

This is what grief looks like. It sputters, it loses its place, its transitions are clunky, it’s raw—disconcertingly so.  Like a man with a stutter, you want to help finish the thought.

But you don’t.

“We have to do better, we have to do better,” he says again and again.

He talks about the statistics, the gun deaths in America versus other countries.

We know them. Everyone knows them.

The United States has more guns and gun deaths than any other developed country in the world, researchers found. A study by two New York City cardiologists found that the U.S. has 88 guns per 100 people and 10 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people—more than any of the other 27 developed countries they studied.2

“Not. One. More.”

How many times can you shake your head in disbelief? How many times can you nod? What difference does it make anyway?

According to the survey, released today [Jan. 28, 2013], a majority of Americans support a wide array of policies being discussed in Congress: 89 percent support closing the so-called gun show loophole by requiring background checks for all firearms sale; 69 percent support banning the sale of semiautomatic assault weapons; while 68 percent support banning the sale of large-capacity ammunition magazines. Meanwhile, more than 80 percent favor prohibiting “high-risk individuals” from having guns, including those convicted of a serious crime as a juvenile or those convicted of violating a domestic-violence restraining order.3

But Congress hears what it wants to hear.

Efforts to enact stricter gun laws fizzled in April of last year, when a bill that included stronger federal background checks for gun purchases failed to pass the Senate.4

Craven. Irresponsible. 

There will be more. Lots more.

Martinez is a metaphor for all fathers of children murdered by guns; he’s a father of just one.

There are sons and daughters at this meeting, too, small ones, running around, hiding fruit and giggling.

It must be killing him. 

He brings up Sandy Hook, which calls to mind that excruciating wail—the one we heard on national television when he told a CNN reporter, “My kid died because nobody responded to what occurred at Sandy Hook. Those parents lost little kids! It’s bad enough that I lost my 20-year-old. But I had 20 years with my son. That’s all I’ll ever have, but those people lost their children at six and seven years old. How do you think they feel? And who’s talking to them now? Who’s doing anything for them now?”

Hearing “Sandy Hook,” some parents almost instinctively freeze. It’s Pavlovian. 

There’s a loud crash somewhere in the enormous house. One of these children starts to cry. 

A woman, the mother, says, “Don’t worry. I know when it’s a bad scream.”

A child is fine. 

Even Martinez smiles.

He knows what a father knows when a father loses a son—no, not loses. You lose a son to drugs, accidents, even cancer, but when yours gets shot in a convenience store while buying a snack, in the middle, perhaps, of some beautiful thought, in the prime of a life not yet realized, it’s not a loss—it’s—that’s the problem. Language fails you. There’s no word. And without it, how do you make sense of anything? How do you stand in a living room in Bixby, Oklahoma, facing parents who have their children—children who are running and laughing and stealing oranges—and not feel like the loneliest man in the country?

Afterward, Martinez makes his way through the room. I, along with two or three others, meet him by the kitchen table. 

“I didn’t do enough,” he says again. “We have to do more,” he says again. “We have to do more. We have to.”

We nod.

I want to talk sons. Dead sons.

But mine overdosed; his was murdered. As much as I’d like to think we’re brothers, we’re not.

Grief is not grief.

I don’t bring it up.

“As badly as my family feels,” he told HuffPost Live after the shooting, “and the other families that have suffered from this tragedy, I go down the street and everybody feels sorry for me, everybody offers condolences. Nobody is going to offer condolences to them,” Martinez said. “They’ve lost a son, and not only that, they’re devastated by the other people that have died.”5

He is talking about the killer’s family. Elliot Rodger, who murdered Richard’s son as well Cheng Yuan Hong, George Chen, Weihan Wang, Veronika Elizabeth Weiss, and Katherine Breann Cooper. 

“They needed support, too.”

In Judaism, during Shiva (Seven), there’s a 7-day period of mourning. The men don’t shave; the TV is off, the mirrors are covered. Mourners sit on hard chairs. Nothing is done for pleasure. Neighbors bring food and a connection. Then, after the seven days, a prayer is said, signifying its end.

No more will your sun set, nor your moon be darkened, for God will be an eternal light for you, and your days of mourning shall end.

It’s not true, of course. The darkness never lets go.

Martinez says goodbye, leaves the house for a car that will take him to a hotel. There, lost in a town he does not know, he will no doubt endure the mourning and the morning as he waits on God’s eternal light. 

His son’s birthday is about a week away.

Fathers of dead sons never stop sitting Shiva. 

(1) cnn.com: Father of shooting victim chastises politicians, demands new gun laws

(2) abcnews.go.com: U.S. Has More Guns – And Gun Deaths – Than Any Other Country, Study Finds

(3) salon.com : Poll Americans want gun control

(4) nytimes.com: Senate Blocks Drive for Gun Control

(5) huffingtonpost.com: Richard Martinez, Father Of UCSB Shooting Victim: Elliot Rodger’s Parents Need Support, Too