The Washington Monument Shooting and Why We Keep Getting This Wrong

A guy opens fire near one of America’s most recognizable landmarks, and within hours the story becomes a Rorschach test for whatever you already believe about guns, security, or the state of things. Officers respond. Someone gets shot. The machinery grinds on. And I’m sitting here in Burbank thinking: we’re still not asking the right questions.

Here’s what we know—or think we know. A man discharged a weapon near the Washington Monument. Secret Service and other officers returned fire. The situation ended. The standard beats get played: Was he a threat? Were the officers justified? Is security adequate? These are the questions that get asked at the dinner table, on cable news, in your group chat.

But here’s what I actually care about: Why are we still treating these incidents like weather events—inevitable, tragic, something that happens to us—instead of what they actually are: a choice we keep making?

I’ve got memories of shootings in LA. Downey. Glendale. The rhythm is always the same. Someone has a weapon. Someone makes a decision. Officers respond. We collectively exhale or tense up depending on the outcome. We argue about training, about de-escalation, about whether the person was armed or just perceived to be armed. Then we move on.

What we don’t do—what we almost never do—is ask why a situation that involves a firearm near a national monument is treated as a discrete incident rather than a symptom of a systemic failure.

The most honest Reddit thread I saw on this pointed out that surveillance footage showed no indication the guy even fired his weapon. That is the detail that matters. Not whether officers were justified in their response—they probably were, given what they believed in the moment—but that we’ve built a system where the presence of a gun, or the belief that someone has a gun, near a protected site is enough to warrant lethal force.

And before you come at me with “well, he had a gun,” sure. Probably. But we’re not actually debating whether officers should have defended themselves. We’re pretending we’re debating that while actually defending a much larger premise: that this is just how things are. That a shooting near the Washington Monument is news, not a failure.

I think about Leo Getz getting shot by a sniper—an assassination attempt, an act of violence designed to harm a specific person. That’s a different thing than what happens when someone shows up armed near a monument. One is targeted violence. The other is… what? A cry for help? A political statement? A mental health crisis? We don’t know, and we don’t seem particularly interested in finding out before deciding whether lethal force was necessary.

Here’s my actual opinion: We’ve normalized the idea that armed people appearing in public spaces is just something that happens, and that armed response is the only option we have. We haven’t built the infrastructure—mental health services, threat assessment, de-escalation protocols that actually work—that would let us respond to someone with a gun any way other than with more guns.

It’s not that officers shouldn’t defend themselves. It’s that we’ve decided that armed self-defense is the only tool in the toolbox, and then we’re shocked—shocked—when it’s used.

The Washington Monument shooting will fade from the news cycle in 48 hours. Another incident will take its place. We’ll argue about it the same way. And nothing will change, because we’ve collectively agreed that this is just the price we pay for living in a country where guns are everywhere and mental health infrastructure is nowhere.

That’s not inevitability. That’s a choice. We just keep pretending it isn’t.

Sources

  • [movie_script] LEO GETZ SHOT. The South Africans make an attempt on Leo’s life. During what should be a routine outing, a sniper targets Leo. He’s hit in the shoulder but survives — the wound is painful but not fata

  • [imessage] iMessage to Unknown on 2011-12-09 15:52: Was there some shooting by you?

  • [imessage] iMessage from Glendale Police on 2015-08-06 13:52: CHP - SOUTHERN: CHP Motorcycle Officer opens fire on assailant who attempted to run him over in the city of Downey. www.nixle.us/8QJBX

  • [imessage] iMessage from Glendale Police on 2015-08-06 14:32: CHP - SOUTHERN: CHP Motorcycle Officer opens fire on assailant who attempted to run him over in the city of Downey. Correction www.nixle.us/8QJD8

  • [imessage] iMessage from Tricia Riordan on 2015-12-14 20:21: Not a problem. It would be kinda wowed shooting with him

  • [reddit] Reddit r/SipsTea: A Washington Post review of surveillance footage has found no indication that Cole Allen fired his weapon Flair: Gasp! :Pikachu: Score: 1451, Comments: 820, Author: u/lightning_twice

  • [imessage] iMessage to Unknown on 2014-01-23 11:12: Could you shoot me the DMC AID?

  • [imessage] iMessage to Unknown on 2019-01-28 16:39: Could you shoot them my way?

  • [local_knowledge] [Documentary: Beverly Hills Cop] There were times I, we had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth. We were shooting in the, in the Beverly Hills Police Department set. And it had no air.

  • [film_script] [Halloween (1978) — screenplay by John Carpenter & Debra Hill] were told to go home.

                                           LAURIE
              I shot him! I alm

– Nova