Louis Klarevas - Rampage Nation: Securing America from Mass Shootings

In 2003, a lone gunman tried to shoot me, my cousin, and four of our friends as we were sitting at a taverna on the Greek island of Ikaria. The violent events of that evening were set in motion several hours earlier. After an entire day of binge drinking, a local fisherman drove his car through the narrow public square where we were enjoying dinner, bumping several chairs and tables. While no one was hurt, his recklessness drew the ire of numerous patrons. Following a few exchanges of boisterous threats, he departed for his house. An hour later, driving a pickup truck this time, he raced through the same space, forcing the dozen or so of us who were still at the taverna to jump from our seats and take cover as he smashed through several chairs en route to the nearby marina. Within minutes, we heard the distinct putt-putt-putt-putt of his caique's diesel motor as he sailed away. We knew that he had inherited a second house from his late father, which was located about twenty minutes away by boat; so we presumed he was heading there to sleep it off.

We were wrong. After about an hour, he was back.

Driving his pickup at a high rate of speed, he pulled up on the one group that was still left at the tavernamy group. Jamming his brakes right in front of us, he grabbed a vintage shotgun that was resting on the passenger seat. My friend, seeing the gunman maneuvering to get the weapon around the steering wheel and out the driver's side window, lunged toward the truck, allowing him to grab the barrel just as it was positioned to shoot.

Standing about fifteen to twenty feet behind the truck, I saw a flash of bright light and heard a thunder reminiscent of cannon fire as my friend pushed the barrel upward and to the side at the precise moment the gunman pulled the trigger, causing the blast to go off-target. My friend yanked the shotgun from the shooter's hands and began to smash it on the pavement.

It was then that, through the rear cab window, I saw the driver reach for something behind his seat. I was frozen in disbelief; the next few seconds felt like time moving in slow motion.

He's got another weapon! He's got another weapon! Yelling at the top of my lungs, I bolted toward the truck.

My cousin, who was watching our friend take his frustration out on the first gun, turned around just in time to grab the second gun before the driver could point it out of the cab. As my cousin tried to wrestle the weapon away from the shooter, I opened the passenger-side door and reached in to grab a hold of him. Wrapping my hands around his neck, I was able to dig my fingers into his throat. Overwhelmed, he released the shotgunwhich my cousin pulled out through the driver's side windowand punched the accelerator, forcing me to let go.

It was over. The gunman had fled and no one was seriously injured.

Afterward, as we were trying to make sense of what had just happened while waiting for the police to arrive, one of my friends suggested, We had a guardian angel looking out for us.

Did we really?

For years, the incident haunted me. Why did this person go on a rampage? What did we do to warrant being the target of his rage? And most important of all, how was it that not a single one of us was seriously wounded?

The more I played out the incident in my head, the more I relayed it to others, and the more I analyzed it, the more I realized that our good fortune that evening had nothing to do with any sort of divine intervention.

The gunman was ultimately convicted of attempted murder and received a stiff sentence by Greek standards: seven years in prison. The judge's decision not to show much leniency was partly related to the shooter's violent past. As I learned after the shooting, the perpetrator had a history of physical altercations and at one point even tried to cut out his girlfriend's tongue with a knife. The amateur psychologist in me concluded that this guy had the hallmarks of a sociopath.

Of course, while some sociopaths occasionally engage in violenceeven mass violencethat didn't fully explain why he chose to come after us that evening. I always suspected that catching hell from his fellow villagers as he recklessly drove through the pedestrian path provoked him. But even that still left one question unanswered for me: Why did this guy, who had no history of gun violence, take up arms that night? In particular, it struck me as odd that he went to the trouble of traveling to his late father's place by boat to grab his firearms so that he could shoot us. If he wanted to harm us, why not just run us over with his pickup truck? He certainly had an opportunity to do so when he burst through the public square en route to his caique. Even though many of us jumped out of the way, he easily could have hit several people by driving down one of the sides of the path, rather than through the middle. Something no doubt primed him to think guns. As it turned out, he didn't have a history of gun violence because he never owned firearmsuntil he inherited his father's shotguns a few years earlier. He finally resorted to gun violence because he could.

Why us, though? What did we do to him that he wanted us dead? The simple answer: Nothing. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. His assault was more than just an act of violence. It was a statement. Hours earlier, he felt besieged by the villageand he was returning to the same spot to exact his revenge. Sitting there, we became targets by association.