19 Oct A Few Words on Violence
Since the sniper attacks began, there have been 18 “traditional homicides” in the area. They included a congressional intern who was also a poet. A mother found stabbed in her apartment. A young man who called his mother every day to tell her he loved her.
Add to that list Irina Hans who was an intern at our museum. I read the article that appeared on her homicide in Monday morning’s paper. But, like most murder stories, I glossed over it. Violence and breakfast do not sit well together. It wasn’t until I got to work that I made the connection. We were all devastated.
The loss of someone so full of energy and promise to an act of violence was bad enough. But added to the three weeks of angst, we have been feeling an incredible weight this week.
One of the “water cooler” rationalizations around town has been the fact that one is more likely to be killed in an auto accident than by the sniper. The message is that one must live their lives as normally as possible. And while I agree with that sentiment, I find little solace in this statistic. Most traffic accidents are just that: accidents. The shooter is looking to kill and frighten. There is a difference.
However, there is something valuable about considering how one lives their life. For many around the world, what we in Washington have been experiencing this month is part of their normal state of affairs. In Israel and the West Bank, in parts of the Philippines, and other areas of Asia, just to name a few, people are dodging snipers every day.
One of our good friends is from Ireland. Our children go to school together and on the Monday of the school shooting, we talked as we picked our girls up under police escort. “This is why I left Belfast,” she told me as we walked quickly to our cars. “I didn’t want my children to have to go through this.”
Irina Hans’ parents have made their way from the Ukraine this week to attend her funeral. Their picture of life in America will forever be colored by her violent death. How many more parents will similarly bury their children this week around the world?
Rather than comparing the chances that one might be gunned down by the sniper to being killed in a car accident, I’m trying to compare how I feel dodging bullets with what others have been living with for some time: in Southeast Asia or in Southeast Washington.
Alexander Gabis
Posted at 23:25h, 20 OctoberIrina Hans was killed near where I make my home, in Camp Springs, Maryland. I feel personally responsible for this. I want everyone in Camp Springs and Prince George’s County to feel responsible for this. I want the government of this county, of this state, and of the country to feel responsible. Because *we* killed this woman. We have created the monsters who roam our streets with guns. They are our children, and we’ve trained them well in the arts of killing and violence. Washington DC has brought such violence on itself; the lawyers, the politicians, the statesmen and the generals … those who set the policies for the nation … the supposed leaders … it is they who have brought this on us: snipers, anthrax attacks, bombings, terrorism, and the killing of this young woman. Our leaders have created this nightmare. But the ultimate responsibility lies with the rest of us -we who have put the leaders into their positions of power.
Al Gabis
The Westchester Watch
Camp Springs, Maryland
Chris
Posted at 13:02h, 21 OctoberYes.
See “Bowling for Columbine” by Michael Moore if you can. It addresses these very issues and manages to make it entertaining as well.
Douglas Laux
Posted at 00:21h, 22 OctoberThe death of Irina Hans marks a most horrible, tragic and senseless loss of a beautiful life to this world. Living in Columbia, MO, I have known Irina and her husband, Jason for several years. I wish everyone in this country could have known the beautiful and young-spirited person she was. She was a wonderful and very loving wife to her husband, and she had a warm, glowing personality that charmed all around her. She and her husband had worked so hard together as graduate students to make their educational aspirations come true. My heart is heavy with sadness having learned of Irina’s brief life cut tragically short. I remember watching her pretty light-blue eyes come to life when she talked about her love of art history, and I know she was fullfilling her dream by performing her internship at the prestigious Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Hers was truely a beautiful life in full bloom. My thoughts and prayers are with her husband and their families.
Irina came to this country to pursue her dreams. Shame on our country. Shame on our people. The lives of the 30,000+ annual victims lost to death by firearms in this nation rest on our collective consciousness. More people are killed in America by firearms than in all other European countries and Japan combined together –many times over…each year. 90% of these fatalities are related to handguns. I wish I could brand the memories and the anguish of all surviving loved ones into the minds of all who either support continued possession of handguns or who simply turn their heads away from this disgraceful issue in ignorance. Legal, easy access to handguns does not protect us from crime, but contributes to it by helping poor thousands of more weapons into the illegal market and into the hands of would-be murderers, and by facilitating murder in cases of domestic violence. And need I remind anyone of the hundreds of children killed accidentally by firearms in the home each year? Will we ever learn?
For beautiful Irina and her berieved husband’s sake, for the sake of the lifetime of happiness they deserved to have shared together, I hope this time comes soon.
Douglas E. Laux
Columbia, Missouri
Chris
Posted at 11:58h, 22 OctoberDouglas, you made me feel a little closer to Irina, someone I did not know (I live on the west coast). I am sorry that you lost this beautiful person and that we all – the country – did as well.
Michael Moore’s film shows how it’s possible to make changes. He goes to KMart’s headquarters with two of the Columbine victims and shows them scars from bullets sold by KMart (the store stopped selling guns but continued to sell bullets). The next day, KMart agreed to stop selling ammunition.
We have to do something.
Angela Hans
Posted at 11:00h, 23 OctoberI am married to the grandfather of Irina Hans’s husband, Jason Hans. People have no idea of the costs, both emotionally and financially, to the families of murder victims. Because they have the advantage, the travel industry practices wholesale rape when it comes to shipping a body home to the Ukraine; buying plane tickets to immediately travel around the world to attend a memorial service or a funeral. (The airlines have apparently discarded so called bereavement fares.) Our families have cried buckets of tears and the only thing we seem to have learned very well is how to sit and stare at the walls for hours. Irina Hans was a very unique personality. She was beautiful, charming, ambitious, thoughtful and considerate of others, intelligent and full of promise for tomorrow. Some infectious germ wasted her with a bullet because she was walking home from the subway station after attending a Washington Symphony concert. What type of low life has someone spawned?
Angela Hans
Posted at 11:03h, 23 OctoberI agree with Al Gabis regarding the responsibility for the senseless death of Irina Hans. Can someone tell me how to say….”I’m ashamed because Irina was murdered in the capital city of my homeland”….in Russian?
Al Gabis
Posted at 17:17h, 06 NovemberLast Tuesday a local newspaper, the Prince George’s Journal, published an article (letter) I sent them that put the death of Irina in the context of the recent D.C. sniper shootings and the high crime rate in my area. Here is a link to the article:
http://www.jrnl.net/news/02/Oct/jrn82291002.html
I have not seen any response from local politicians.
-ag
Holly Silvers
Posted at 21:03h, 27 JanuaryI worked as editor for a graduate student art history journal published by Indiana University for which I selected for inclusion Irina’s wonderful paper on the gardens in Caillebotte’s life. I never met Irina, but corresponded with her via email during the editing process and thought she was a kind, thoughtful, and highly perceptive and intelligent person. She was so easy to work with and so grateful for advice on her writing, which was marvelous to begin with. The journal finally came out in print last week, January 2003, and today, January 27, I learned of her murder. I have the deepest sorrow and sympathy for her family, friends, and the rest of us who were or would have been touched by such a remarkable person. I am heartbroken at the senseless end to her all too brief life.
Lynn Fletcher
Posted at 07:56h, 23 JulyMy husband and I have been best friends with Jasons’ mother, Marilyn Buckley and her husband, Jim Buckley, for over twenty years. Jason was just a young boy when we met and befriended the Buckleys in Oklahoma City. Our families transferred to California in 1986 where Jason completed high school and joined the Army. Afterwards he chose to matriculate to the University of Missouri where he met the beautiful Irina. Jim and Marilyn were so thrilled when Jason and Irina married. They were equally proud of the accomplishments of both Jason and Irina as undergrad and graduate students. With the internship at the Smithsonian Irina had just begun the final step of persuing her dream as a museum curator. This senseless murder has crushed that dream and the future Jason and Irina had planned together. What a horrible tragedy for both families.
We never had the pleasure of meeting the beautiful Irina although we felt like we knew her. Marilyn kept us informed through pictures, forwarded emails and the annual newletter published by Jason and Irina. Our hearts are breaking for our dear friends.