CLEVELAND, Ohio — We expected it to be a season of summer sizzle and smoke — food sizzling on the picnic grill and the celebratory fireworks smoking the night air with community-sponsored colorful bangs.
They are staples of summer, but there is also troubling smoke in the air: The acrid smell of gunpowder belched from the barrels of guns continues to rock us.
It was 2:30 in the morning as the Warehouse District nightspots were closing.
Bullets hit nine people, sending them to the hospital.
In a Lorain house Tuesday, a 25-year-old Lorain man, Jaylon Jennings, was arrested in connection with the mass shooting. Jennings has been charged with attempted murder.
The city's mayor and police chief voiced their anger and frustration at a sidewalk news conference. We covered the story, of course, but it also went nationwide on the TV networks.
Cleveland has long wanted the world to beat a pathway to our doorstep, but this never what we have in mind: Nine shot and wounded as a gunman sprayed the crowd.
Said Mayor Bibb, "We have a gun problem in this city."
No doubt about that.
And we could use more cops. No doubt about that, either. There were cops nearby when the shooting occurred, but the brazen gunman didn't care anyway.
Question: Are you mad yet?
I'm mad as hell about the gunfire, not only the blasting in the warehouse district, but everywhere else. Almost every night, we report on a shooting somewhere in our Northeast Ohio area, not just the city of Cleveland, but the region — city, suburbs, rural.
This Warehouse District shooting struck a nerve. After all, it was in the Warehouse District, a gemstone in Cleveland’s crown visited by people from throughout the region and by tourists from out of town.
Wherever you live you ought to be angry. What happens in Cleveland affects all of us.
Cleveland is the hub of a wheel, and the suburban areas are spokes attached to the hub. If the hub goes down, we all lose, in some way.
We are all in this together. A gunman came shooting the other night. The next time, it could be where I am or where you are. We realize the danger zone is everywhere.
If we are going to fix this gun problem and all the other problems associated with guns, we will have to find solutions together. We are all in it, and if we are going to get the guns off the streets, we all must shout about it, and shout about it at all the right places to all the people who have the power to make it happen.
Or, at least, begin to make it happen.
