Jacksonville tragedy hits close to home

One week ago today, I published a cheerful article about my first experience at an eSports event. Long story short, I had never gone to such an event before, and I jumped into the deep end for my first experience, attending the Call of Duty World Championship. I ended up having a blast.

As part of my article, I expressed how I went into the day with preconceived notions about Call of Duty fans, and the sort of people I expected to see at the event. This was a completely prejudiced opinion, and I admit that later in the article. The people I encountered at the Call of Duty event were friendly, open and kind. The crowd showed a great deal of sportsmanship, and friendly rivalry was the spirit of the day. I quickly realized that I was among gamers, just in a different branch of gaming than the areas I usually inhabit. These were my people, and I was happy and comfortable among them.

There are some things that I didn’t mention in my article. I sat in aisle seats the entire time. At every moment, I knew the direct route to the closest exit. I avoided moving in densely crowded areas. Because as much as I hate it, this is how I live my life now. I love public events, but they make me nervous.

The shootings in Jacksonville, Florida today hit me very hard. Gaming events have joined the ever-growing list of public events where some lunatic grabs a weapon and takes the lives of innocent people. Make no mistake, these folks at the Madden 19 tournament were gamers. Just like me, just like you. They were spending their Sunday afternoon pursuing their favorite hobby, just like many of us do every Sunday. And now three people - including the gunman - are dead, and many more are injured. And just like every time a movie theater, concert, church or school gets shot up, I think “that so easily could have been me”. The people that were killed and injured today have probably had the exact same thought at some point in the past. None of us are immune.

My son is a devoted Madden player. I could easily picture him at an event like the one today. I ache for the families and friends of today’s victims. I won’t offer the overused and now much-despised “thoughts and prayers”. I will say that I have a heaviness in my heart when I think of what those families must be going through this evening, and that there are no words that could express or ease the sorrow our entire gaming community feels at this attack.

We at Gaming Nexus represent a pretty good cross-section of the gaming community. We are different ages, ethnicities, genders. We have different gaming interests, different family situations, different living arrangements. We are students and instructors, employees and employers, public servants and private sector folks. I imagine that we probably represent a cross-section of political views, but you know, we’re gamers. We mostly talk about games. But across the board, we all know that this sort of attack cannot be allowed. It is just common sense, regardless of your beliefs and background. This sort of thing must be stopped. No one should be hurt while attending a gaming event.

I am not interested in getting into a debate on gun law. What I can say is that the gaming community needs to understand that like the rest of the sub-cultures in the U.S., there are bad seeds among us. And while 99.9999% of gamers would never imagine bringing real-life violence to a gaming event, it only takes that .0001% to run out to his car at a Madden tournament. Gaming organizations need to start protecting against that .0001%, because like it or not, they are out there. Gamers deserve to feel secure at events focused on our culture. Gaming is awesome. There is no room for violence of this sort at gaming events, and it is up to the organizations that sponsor these events to figure out how to prevent it. 

I am not the only one calling for increased security at gaming events tonight. Its not an unusual stance for me. I call for increased security for everything, all the time. I want to feel safe. I want you to feel safe. I want my kids to feel safe. I want my fellow Gaming Nexus writers to feel safe.

I don’t have proposed solutions. I don’t know the answers. I just know that we as a group need to have this conversation. It is frankly overdue. We owe it to each other to keep each other safe.

Because last week at that Call of Duty event, I carried a large black bag with me everywhere, and not one person asked to look inside. There were a lot of people in that arena. They were friendly, open and kind. They were my people. I don’t want to see any of them get hurt.