Orlando “Gun” Man

Late last night at the Orlando International Airport in Florida, reports flooded into the police about a man waiting in the rental car area with a gun. In recent times, the high concentration of police shootings would lead many people to believe that this scenario would end poorly and stop reading now, but fortunately, that is not the case.

Although there were no security guards on the scene where the man was wondering around, which is cause for concern, the police quickly responded and took the necessary precautions. They surround the scene and evacuated those who were at risk hiding behind the concrete barriers in the area.

For the next two hours, crisis negotiators spoke with the recently identified Michael Wayne Pettigrew, 26, who was wielding what would eventually be made known as a fake handgun.

During the two-hour deliberation, Pettigrew was pointing the gun at the surrounding officers and asking them to shoot him. Police Chief Jon Mina said, “When the officers got there, they realized this was a person in mental distress and basically wanted to do the whole suicide by cop thing,” which sadly has become a more frequent occurrence.

It ended with Pettigrew, a former Marine, laying on the ground face down and the gun no the ground near him. Officers were then able to move in, remove the weapon and apprehend the criminal. Although no one was hurt, he will be charged with aggravated assault with a firearm, and will also be held for mental health evaluation.

A story like this could easily be turned into a discussion on gun control laws, but what is a more pressing issue is this man’s mental health. He is just one case out of many recently that have threatened violence because of their mental state. Unlike Newtown and the Colorado shooting, luckily, no one was injured but we cannot rely on chance in the future.

People on both sides of the aisle would quickly turn to say that we need stricter gun laws so that the mentally unstable cannot get their hands-on weapons. This is not the case. If a person’s mind drives them to the point where the feel as if they have to cause other people physical pain or even “find” a way to die, all fingers point to increasing this nation’s support for the mentally ill.

A friend I met at school is from Newtown. What happened that day in 2012 has grossly spun out of control. Instead of mourning for the lives of the young people who died that day, people are using it as a platform to discuss gun control issues. Those in the town that I have spoken to would rather the discussion be directed towards preventing senseless shootings, like the one that happened in their town, from ever happening again.

At the end of the day, those terrorists who hope to kill and cause destruction and chaos for a cause that they believe in will continue to occur because bad people are able to get a hold of guns. Shootings like those in Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut, and even scenarios like the one yesterday involving Michael Pettigrew can be prevented. We just need to offer these people help.