A 15-year-old football player from Knoxville is a hero – another hero and another victim of gun violence.
Knoxville police said Monday that Zaevion Dobson, a sophomore and football player at Fulton High School in Knoxville, was in the wrong place at the wrong time as people believed to be affiliated with gangs engaged in deadly back-and-forth attacks starting Thursday night and stretching into Friday morning.
When the gun play came to an apartment building where Zaevion had gone to play video games, he had stopped on the porch to talk to some girls. When the gunmen opened fire into the crowd, Zaevion jumped on top of three girls, trying to save their lives, according to an emotional statement by one of the girls and by David Rausch, chief of the Knoxville Police Department. Zaevion was fatally wounded, but no one else was injured during a retaliatory shooting intended to target someone else.
If this pattern sounds all too familiar to Chattanoogans, it should. We have watched similar shootings mar the peace and harm innocent children all too often on our streets in recent years.
Even President Barack Obama, on his annual vacation to his native state Hawaii, heard about the young Knoxville football player. Referencing gun violence, he wrote on Twitter: “Zaevion Dobson died saving three friends from getting shot. He was a hero at 15. What’s our excuse for not acting?”
Great question.
Since 9/11, fewer than 100 people have died in U.S. terrorist attacks (of any kind), while we countenance 33,000-plus annual gun deaths like that of young Dobson.
Not only has our Congress not acted to help stem the blood of our youth, it recently wouldn’t even act to impede suspected terrorists on the FBI’s no-fly list from maintaining easy access to guns.
So, yes, Mr. President: Great question.