gun control

today started out as a beautiful day: it was partly sunny and nice and cool (36F)! we squeezed in an 11.5 mile run around the bottom of the island. talk about mentally and physically challenging - lack of consistency in our workouts and runs is starting to show in our weakened joints and muscles and mental prowess as well. i think kev and i were both internally praying just to get through the first three miles, and the strong gusty winds did not help!

no time better than the present to get back into shape though! hopefully we can be a bit more consistent starting this week with less than two months to go before the la 26.2.

after the run, we rushed to jing fong in chinatown, transported by a cabbie with an asian-food fetish, to celebrate hode's 28th birthday (for the seventh time). it was great to see the entire cmu gang after the holidays, wives, and babies all present :) we got to hear about glenn's proposal in hawaii, i met and fed baby ben for the first time (SO CUTE!!!!), and to top it all off, we got a nice email from vince during dimsum that he had proposed to shirley in australia!! woohoo ~~ two weddings coming up! it seems like a second wave of weddings for the cmu friends, and from what it sounds like, especially the couples with kids are ready to party! 

im looking forward to some destination weddings and spending time with friends and their families, which feels harder and harder as families are expanding and moving further away from the city.

then came this afternoon.

after making our way back to chelsea, we stopped by homedepot for 45 min or so to pick up some supplies and i spent a little time selecting the perfect snake plant :) as we were waiting on line by the registers, we heard two loud sounds. they didn't sound like gunshots to me, but kevin thought they did. we heard two more shots and kev saw a man running desperately away from something/one (about 25 feet away from us) and falling as he was running. "DROP EVERYTHING AND LET'S GO"  kevin said ... i was still a bit in shock thinking - that didn't sound like gun shots tho. why would there be gunshots? there couldn't be ... are we overreacting?

my initial reaction was to hide ... if they were gunshots, i didn't want to be shot while running :( but kev was like - the door is right there (pointing ahead of us about 25 ft in the opposite direction from where we had heard the gunshots). so i dropped my plant (sadface) and other supplies i had been holding, and along with the other shoppers and employees started running slowly towards the exit.

when we got outside onto the sidewalk, people had no idea what the fuss was about and were walking by normally. a couple employees were screaming "there were gunshots!" and ran towards fifth ave and we went that way as well. about 30 sec later when we reached fifth ave, kev was pointing for us to continue running to get far away from the store and potential harm's way.

police cars were blazing and driving up fifth avenue and broadway (in the opposite direction of traffic) were at the homedepot within 2-3 minutes of the first gunshots. it was amazing to see how quickly they responded and arrived at the scene of the crime.

when we were a block north of the homedepot, we peered through the empty parking lot to try to understand what had just happened. twitter feeds were lit up with updates about the shots fired and indeed, there were two people killed: an ex-employee had shot and killed his former manager and then shot and killed himself afterwards.

we walked home a little stunned and grateful for not getting hurt. but there's something to be said with the number of shootings we hear about these days and gun control. i don't understand how any pedestrian in nyc can argue that he "needs" a gun. but if the newtown elementary school shooting massacre wasn't enough reason to tighten gun control policies, i don't know what it will take ...