CNN
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Wrong doorbell. Wrong driveway. Wrong car.
In all three cases, a man opened fire rather than ask a simple question: “Do you mean to be here?”
This is not a story about mass shootings, AR-15s, or really even about gun laws. At least not yet.
It’s about a country with more guns than people, where whatever inspires the 30% of Americans, who are most likely to be men, who own firearms has converged in dangerous and deadly ways with whatever fear, frustration or paranoia leads someone to shoot at a stranger or a car that’s driving away.
These three shootings happened in less than a week around the country:
► In Kansas City, Missouri on April 13, two shots were fired at Ralph Yarl, a Black teen trying to pick up his brothers just before 10 p.m. By some miracle, he survived after being shot in the head.
► In rural upstate New York on April 15, two shots were fired from a porch at cars full of young people that had just turned around after looking for a party in the wrong driveway. Again, just before 10 p.m. Twenty year-old Kaylin Gillis was killed by the bullet that struck the car driven by her boyfriend.
► Outside Austin, Texas, on April 18, two cheerleaders were shot in a grocery store parking lot just after midnight. One of the girls, Heather Roth, accidentally tried to get in the wrong vehicle. She and her teammate, Payton Washington, were both struck. Roth was treated at the scene and Washington is recovering in the ICU.
All three shootings occurred after dark. All three shooters have been accused of serious crimes. There have already been stories about whether any of these cases might fall under so-called “stand your ground” laws that allow armed Americans in most states to defend their so-called “castle.”
Related: What to know about stand your ground laws
We’ll leave it to the judicial process to determine how exactly Yarl, a 5’8” aspiring chemical engineer; a vehicle driving away from a house in New York; or teenage girls in a parking lot could possible represent a deadly threat.
Lester just opened fire
What may tie them all together is that the shooters don’t appear to have been interested in looking for answers.
Yarl and Andrew Lester, the 84-year-old homeowner accused of opening fire, both told police that Lester almost immediately shot Yarl upon opening his front door. Yarl, wounded, ran to multiple houses asking for someone to call 911.
‘I tried to step on the gas’
In upstate New York, 65-year-old Kevin Monahan, who has shown no remorse, according to the local sheriff, fired shots from his porch at two cars and a motor cycle that were driving away.
“As soon as we figured out that we were at the wrong location, we started to leave, and that’s when everything happened,” Gillis’ boyfriend, Blake Walsh, told NBC.
“My friend said, ‘They’re shooting — go!’ I tried to step on the gas as fast as I could, and that’s when the fatal shot (that struck Gillis) came through,” he said.
‘He just started shooting at all of us’
The suspect in Austin, Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, is also said to have simply opened fire.
“I see the guy get out of the passenger door, and I rolled my window down, and I was trying to apologize to him,” Roth said, according to CNN’s report. “And then halfway, my window was down, and he just threw his hands up, and then he pulled out a gun and he just started shooting at all of us.”
‘Threat to the public’
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said on “CNN This Morning” that he feels that the behavior from Lester – who was released on bail – makes him a “threat to the public.”
“I don’t know what house he’s in right now. I don’t know if that’s a house that the next Amazon driver or postal worker or campaign worker may knock on the door for,” Lucas said. “And then what? And then what does somebody have to worry about?”
He also pointed out he has spent time with the Liberian community in Kansas City since the shooting and many of them have sought out primarily White neighborhoods. (Yarl’s parents are Liberian immigrants, according to The New York Times.)
Lucas described the community as “hard-working people who moved to Kansas City, many of whom have moved to neighborhoods like this one for the best opportunities for their children, knowing that they are majority White, but thinking that it is worthwhile in a way because there could be this great education, you wouldn’t deal with these sorts of challenges,” Lucas said.
What we know about why Lester shot Yarl is what he has told police. Awoken by his doorbell, Lester said he was, “‘scared to death’ due to male’s size and Lester’s age (84) and inability to defend himself,” according to police.
‘Everything to do with race’
Lucas doesn’t buy that, noting that Lester said Yarl was six feet tall, when he’s actually 5’8”.
“I think that this has everything to do with race,” Lucas said. “The defendant’s fear of Black people, Black men, Black boys. I think that’s why we are all discussing this now. … I think that if the young man wasn’t Black, we wouldn’t be here today.”
A previous example is still awaiting trial
Each of these distinct cases will wind their way through the justice system. It could take a while.
For example, another shooting outside Austin, in which a 65-year-old man, Terry Duane Turner, shot and killed Adil Dghoughi in his car as Dghoughi backed out of his driveway in 2021, has still not been resolved, according to local media reports.
Turner did not speak with Dghougi, but said he felt threatened that Dghougi was parked next to his pickup truck in the early morning hours and has claimed the “stand your ground” law in Texas justified him killing Dghoughi.
Who owns the guns?
Reading about gun violence can make it seem like gun ownership is ubiquitous. There are about 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to one estimate. But about half the nation’s privately owned guns are owned by a fraction of the US adult population, according to a 2017 report from Harvard and Northeastern universities.
Related interactive: How US gun culture stacks up with the world
About three in 10 adults say they own a gun and four in 10 say they live in a household with a gun, according a 2017 Pew Research Center Survey cited by CNN’s Harmeet Kaur last year.
But there are certain groups that are much more likely to own a gun. Nearly half of White men, compared to less than a quarter of White women and non-White men, said they owned a gun in the Pew survey. Just 16% of women of color said they owned a gun.
There are also the expected partisan divides.
Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to own a gun.
People in rural areas are much more likely than city dwellers to own a gun.
Why people buy guns can be complicated.
Kaur writes:
People own guns for a number of purposes, and most gun owners say they own a gun for more than one reason.
Protection is a motivator for a vast majority of people. A Gallup survey conducted in October 2021 found that 88% of gun owners counted protection against crime as a reason for owning a gun, while 70% counted target shooting and 56% counted hunting as reasons. Similarly, Pew found that two-thirds of gun owners cited protection as a major reason for owning a gun, while about four in 10 cited hunting and three in 10 cited sport shooting as major reasons.
About three-quarters of gun owners see firearms as key to their freedoms, while about half see them as important to their identities, according to Pew.
A lot of gun owners keep a loaded gun
A more recent KFF survey offered some additionally important insights. That survey also found about four in 10 Americans live in a house with a gun. Among these, more than half said the gun is stored in the same location as ammunition and more than a third said the gun is stored loaded.
That’s another thing that appears to tie these recent shootings together – loaded guns at the ready. And no questions asked.
