Idaho was never immune to mass shootings. What will we do after Boise Towne Square?

The Editorial Board
·2 min read

Idaho has had two mass shootings in five months. The latest happened here, and it has taken two lives from us.

America has faced a rising tide of gun violence and mass shootings. Even the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought life to a halt, did not stop the rise.

Until last year, Idaho was one of the few states in the nation that had not had a modern mass shooting, at least according to most sources. So it was easy to think that it couldn’t happen here, that we were somehow immune from what was happening so often all around us.

We were never immune. We were only lucky.

This year, that luck did not hold.

Three were injured at the mass shooting at Rigby Middle School in May. Another student at the same middle school was arrested with a gun in September. Now, according to current reports, four people, including a police officer, have been wounded in the mass shooting at the Boise Towne Square Mall. Two others died.

Whether or not these incidents met the technical definition of a mass shooting, they certainly felt like mass shootings. Do we need to wait for an incident that does meet the definition before we act?

The victims today are not only those who were murdered and wounded.

There are dozens of people who huddled, terrified, in stores, hoping the shooter wouldn’t find them.

And all of their friends and relatives, wondering whether the text messages they were receiving now would be the last they would hear from their loved ones.

We always thought we were safe in Idaho, that something like that couldn’t happen here. Monday’s shooting at Boise Towne Square shattered our illusions of safety, that we were somehow immune to problems that happen only in “those other places.” But really, it was only a matter of time. With gun violence and mass shootings in our country at crisis levels, it was bound to happen here at some point. This was just our turn.

Tonight is for mourning.

Tomorrow, we need to figure out what to do about this. We cannot allow this to keep happening.

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion expressing the consensus of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members J.J. Saldaña and Christy Perry.