I live next door in “lovely” Eastside Tacoma and work in a sort of private law enforcement capacity.

Reading your story, at first, I was afraid it was going to turn into an anti-2nd Amendment argument from an emotional position. The Jesuit priests that taught me in college would have said it was a logical fallacy.

That wasn’t the story you told, though. Yours was the story of someone feeling the impotent rage of not being able to protect those you love. I know that feeling myself, from the year my wife and I spent deployed with two different units (mine a competent tip of the spear sort of unit, hers a nasty combination of incompetence and arrogance) in two different parts of Iraq.

Maybe the lessons learned are equally similar, how organizations and individuals struggle to to fight the insurgency of street crime or the insurgency of ISIS and other militants without fixing the ills that led to them.

Right now in our area, heroin is back with a vengeance. In speaking with users, I have been told it’s currently cheaper than weed. The availability of black market fenced weapons and weak policing and prosecution of property crime offenders has lead our region to lead the nation in property crimes like robberies, vehicle prowls, and burglaries. Some of it comes from underfunded organizations. Some from bad leadership.

I don’t know what long term solution exists. Telling you “If we just spent more on education none of this would ever happen,” would be insulting, first, and a lie, second. Maybe the only answer is that, as much as we want to fix our institutions and our society so that we are all safe, the only safety we have is that which we bring for ourselves and others. If we even have that.

I hope your son recovers well and takes care of any physical or mental injuries suffered upon him. I hope his employer is doing right by him. I hope you sleep better than I do at night.