At Close Range: A Memoir of Tragedy and Advocacy

By Leesa Ross

Leesa Ross did not expect to write a book. Neither did she expect the tragedy that her family endured, a horrific and sudden death that led her to write At Close Range. Her debut memoir is the story of what happened after her son Jon died in a freak gun accident at a party. Ross unsparingly shares the complexities of grief as it ripples through the generations of her family, then chronicles how the loss of Jon has sparked a new life for her as a prominent advocate for gun safety.  Before the accident, Ross never had a motivation to consider the role that guns played in her life. Now, she revisits ways in which guns became a part of everyday life for her three sons and their friends. Ross’s attitude towards guns is thorny. She has collectors and hunters in her family. To balance her advocacy, she joined both Moms Demand Action and the NRA. Through At Close Range, the national conversation about gun control plays out in one family’s catalyzing moment and its aftermath. However, At Close Range ultimately shows one mother’s effort to create meaning from tragedy and find a universally reasonable position and focal point: gun safety and responsible ownership.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
• Release date: Apr 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781682830604

Leesa Ross

Leesa Ross is a debut author who’s transformed a tragedy into a mission for safety. After losing a son to a shooting accident, she formed Lock Arms for Life, an educational organization teaching gun safety. A Texas mother of three, she leads Lock Arms, sits on the board of Texas Gun Sense, and belongs to the NRA.

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A MEMOIR OF

TRAGEDY AND

ADVOCACY

LEESA

ROSS

Texas Tech University Press

Copyright © 2020 by Leesa Ross

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including electronic storage and retrieval systems, except by explicit prior written permission of the publisher. Brief passages excerpted for review and critical purposes are excepted.

This book is typeset in Crimson Text. The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

Designed by Hannah Gaskamp

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020931508

ISBN (cloth): 978-1-68283-049-9

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-68283-060-4

Printed in the United States of America

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 / 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Texas Tech University Press

Box 41037

Lubbock, Texas 79409-1037 USA

800.832.4042

[e-mail]

www.ttupress.org

This book is for parents and young adults who have survived gun

tragedies and who don’t want another person to feel their pain; for my husband Randy Ross and my sons Lance and Keaton; and for the legacy of their brother Jon.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface: The New Talk

Chapter 1: Outside the Bubble

Chapter 2: Austin, Boone, and Back

Chapter 3: Searching for Threads

Chapter 4: The Unofficial Investigation

Chapter 5: Boys and Guns

Chapter 6: Picturing the Truth

Chapter 7: My Year of Firsts

Chapter 8: Debunking The decision

Chapter 9: Finding a Legacy

Chapter 10: Putting It All Together

Chapter 11: A Reluctant Advocate

Chapter 12: An Old Soul

Index

Acknowledgments

My tribe of survivors made this book possible. It took many others to share my story. Losing a loved one is tragic. Gaining friends and support is what I got out of this experience. There are many people to thank, so many that I’m sure I’ll overlook someone. If you’re not on this page, just know that you’re in my heart.

Aaron Burleson was the first storyteller who heard me and helped me tell my story. In the months after Jon’s death, his patience and suggestions gave the book its good start. Writing is hardest at the beginning. Aaron gave me a way to remember all that I loved about Jon and his art.

With great appreciation, I would like to thank Ron Seybold for always making time for me. It’s hard to fully express my gratitude. You kept me going, helped me to learn the abcs of writing, and taught me how to put my thoughts onto the pages of this book. You’re as much a part of this story as I am; you helped to show just how precious my Jon was to the world. I feel blessed — and, like I say in this book, I don’t use that word lightly — to call you my friend.

Family is there to catch you when you lose your footing. My beloved Randy held me when I cried and gave me ways to express my doubts while he believed in me out loud. Mom has always taught me how to be kind and forgiving. Thank you for your wisdom and love. Keaton is so much like Jon that I feel like I’m still in touch with the son I’ve lost. He helps me remember the things about my eldest I miss the most. When I needed to recall the details that bring places and people to life, he and Lance could express what I needed to share. Lance was my rock that I could strike against when I needed a spark of inspiration, so he could light the way to seeing things differently. The boys helped me remember the parts of this story while thinking about how things like this can happen. I love you all dearly.

Thanks to Dad and his wife Julia, my steady Eddies, for their strength in the face of our shared loss. To my sisters, Nicole and Amber, thanks for your calls, emails, and texts that gave me encouragement and insights on our family and how we love one another. Thanks to my clans Ross and Terry. To my tribe of friends, Susan, Francine, Kathy, Steve, Giselle, Pam, Raymond, and Debbie: you’re a big reason I can call myself a survivor. In the earliest, hardest days of this story, you were my lifelines.

To my tennis team members and my fellow Bunco players, you were there to keep me in the game when giving up would have been so much easier. Beth, Norma, Cynthia, Karen, Kendra, Susan, Kelly, Beverly, Stacia, and Dee Dee: thank you for your kindness and gentle listening when it was what I needed most.

To our dealership family, thank you for your devotion and love, always taking care of the details while we are away. Your commitment and time have never faltered.

Jon’s friends and teachers: Joe, Jarred, Jessica, Amanda, Kim, Chris, Krystyn, Katey, Trish, Ryan, Logan, Kyle, Jason, Jenna, Blake, Stephanie, and Jourdan. I felt the love for my son in our talks, your notes, and emails. Thank you.

To the people who helped turn my loss into advocacy — Jeff, Gyl, Nicole, Jen, Elva, Diana, Cristine, and Gyl’s fellow board members at Texas Gun Sense: Louis, Ed, Mary Lynn, Frances, Leslie, Susan, Greg, Charlotte, and Anna, and the staff at the Texas legislators’ offices who guided me into testimony and campaigning for safety — thanks for showing me the way to make a stand by telling a tragic story over and over. Flo and Calandrian testified beside me in Texas Legislator hearing rooms where guns were holstered on many hips. Lock Arms for Life was born when you helped me see how we could make a difference.

To Chief Reyes at the Austin Police Department, thank you for attending the earliest advocacy events where I’d speak. We’re all safer because you care. My cohort Jeremy Bohannon with the Police Athletic League program at apd gave me support and a collaborator for the school talks that put my advocacy in front of students and parents.

To the filmmakers at Flatbush Films, especially Judd and Aiden, thank you for the long hours of questions and patience with my answers while you created your documentary. May your film have a long run in the theaters and on streams everywhere.

To my fellow memoirists and book professionals, thanks for my group authors at Austin’s Writers Workshop who helped me expand and enrich this story: Melissa, Anne, Dave, Maryjean, Kara, and Linda. The writing group at Austin’s Christi Center for grief was a resource that led to giving my book the second effort it deserved. At Texas Tech University Press, thanks to Brian for wanting to hear more about my story and Travis for asking the good editor questions that made me think harder about the goal of telling a tragic story. Together we’ve helped change things.

And most important, to Jon. You are my quiet observer of life. I have loved every minute of being your mom. The love, laughter, and even the fights are memories I cherish. You are a son who always followed your heart and kept your imagination. I hope that this fulfills your dream. Thank you for leaving behind so many wonderful gifts. I miss and love you every day.

Preface: The New Talk

There are talks for many things when we are raising our children: sex, drunk driving, and the hundreds of other issues involved with growing up and taking responsibility. We also need a talk about guns — and not the one you think.

It’s not a matter of gun control that put that handgun in the room where my son died, or countless other rooms where people have died. Not enough of us are thinking of the responsibility that handgun ownership should demand. Handguns are weapons designed to kill. There was no effort in North Carolina, where Jon died, to make them safer by instructing those college kids how to live in a world with weapons everywhere.

If the penalty for unsafe gun ownership falls outside of our laws, what do we learn about safety? Drunk driving is an offense even if no fatality results. Unsafe gun ownership can be treated similarly, if we have the courage and love to make it as important as The Talk. We need The New Talk, this one about gun safety.

Over the years, I’d spent countless hours volunteering in my children’s classrooms. I wanted to be involved in their education and their lives. I’ve worn many hats: homeroom mother, overseer of the student store, student directory designer, and liaison for children with special needs. I was a member of both the pta and the Booster Club. Randy, my husband, sometimes joked about my level of involvement. Others probably saw my s’mothering as helicopter parenting. I didn’t care. I hovered, protecting all of the children, not just my own.

Then came Jon’s eighth-grade year, the same year as the Columbine High School shooting. Panic was everywhere. Schools were scrambling to find ways to make families feel more secure, safer. In Austin, where we lived at the time, I received a phone call from a parent at Westlake High School. Jon, my oldest son, was going there the following year. The woman knew about my other school involvement and that I was about to have a high schooler. She asked if I’d be interested in serving on an advisory council for safety and health.

The first meeting was held in the auditorium. I entered the room late, looking across the sea of chairs and around a space that hosted the school plays, searching for a familiar face, but the seminar was already underway.

I slid into an aisle seat, staring at a spreadsheet beaming from a projector. Parents had already put together a list of potential dangers with possible solutions. There was talk about extra lighting, surveillance cameras, monitored doors, and the current procedure for visitors.

Then came the second list. It was directed at us: parents, students, and educators. The speaker explained that securing the building was the first step, but becoming a proactive community was necessary too. We need to train and educate, the committee leader said, so accidents like Columbine can be reduced. I need your help to get the message out. Of course, Columbine was not an accident. It was an attack unleashed by desperate and disturbed kids. Kids who had handguns available

to them.

That day in that school meeting sent a message I’ve heard many times by now: there will always be bad people and we will never be completely safe. But by learning to create a climate of trust and a plan of action, and by educating our children, we might save lives.

Our family moved to North Carolina before I could see all the changes implemented at Westlake. However, I took those lessons about hardware with me. I enrolled my boys in a very small private Christian school. I thought I had done everything I could do to protect my children.

I really believed I had taught them well, right up to the night of Jon’s death. Having endured my loss and that crippling grief, I don’t want what happened to my family to happen to others. I made a huge mistake. I never thought to engage my children in a conversation about handguns or the negligence of others. Where does the responsibility fall? At our own kitchen tables, but also in schools and churches — the places in which we gather to learn and grow.

As said, we have learned to call such a conversation with our teens The Talk. We talk to them about things as important as unprotected sex, drug use, drinking and driving. But unlike a drunk driver, gun owners are not liable for their machinery. We’re not talking about gun safety. Not yet.

I don’t want other families to experience what happened to mine. I never thought to have the new version of The Talk, the one about handguns, with my sons; I urge other parents to do so now. Tell your kids this: Be careful when you see a gun in the room. Ask if it’s loaded. Don’t pick it up without checking it or, better yet, don’t pick it up at all. Leave if you can’t be sure the room with that gun is a safe room. We teach our children not to get into a car when the driver has been drinking, after all.

I see the ever-growing gun culture as one reason for my oversight. I wasn’t prepared to visualize my son enjoying a night out and ending up in a room with unsecured, loaded guns. That practice is not illegal, but the lack of responsibility is a part of gun ownership in North Carolina, Texas, and nearly everywhere else in the US.

I respect everybody’s right to own a gun in America. I’m a member of the nra. On the other hand, I don’t understand why our schools, our churches, and our communities don’t require us to teach and learn gun safety. It’s as if handguns are being sold everywhere without safeties. There’s nothing that can be built into a gun to make it safer. There’s only us.

Our ownership does not eliminate risky behaviors with handguns; they’re deadly weapons whether or not they are possessed legally. We have hundreds of pages of safety rules for stepladders, I learned. Nobody teaches a stepladder safety class in colleges as part of orientation. The schools don’t teach anything about handguns, either. Nobody has to tell me whether a stepladder or a handgun is more deadly — or which can kill someone with intent, or by accident.

Admitting young adults into a college community on their own for the first time, permitted to own and show off a handgun, or even carry one on campus? That’s something we can all work to change. Not to prohibit ownership, but to demand responsibility, because where the responsibility for Jon’s death lies is unclear. The state thought he was responsible, calling it a suicide. Others ask why that gun was in the room loaded. What they mean to ask is why it was loaded — and why no one took responsibility for that weapon. Some might call that negligence, on the part of the parents of those young adults or the kids themselves.

I still ask myself, during those nights and mornings when I particularly miss Jon, where does the responsibility fall? There are no criminal punishments handed out when someone is negligent with a gun. Jon was guilty of holding a gun. He knew the difference between right and wrong, and he knew that holding any gun towards your head, loaded or not, is profoundly wrong. But we cannot dedicate ourselves to preventing gun accidents if we do not take into account the responsibility of the owner.

Owners must have a role to play in exchange for their ownership rights. In the interest of public health, unsafe ownership should be treated like a dui, until there’s a fatality. I am not advocating jail for every offense. There are laws in some states that do make gun owners responsible when a child dies. But they apply to children under the age of fourteen, and in most cases the gun belongs to their parent. Most prosecutors will not punish those adults, knowing that as parents they have already suffered enough. And they have. I know.

I want to live in a world of that love, where we can begin to make our communities safer in this era of the private handgun. It seems like the schools — where we teach our kids about the dangers of drugs, risky sex, and drinking — is the first place to start. Our churches — where we gather for learning and to find our faith — is a good place, too. We can demand that, and I wish we would. The best place to have a new version of The Talk, though, is in our own homes, or while we ride with our kids in cars and whenever we have their attention (once we quiet the cell phones).

As I tried to find a moral to my painful lesson, I came upon a story in Cosmopolitan about guns and dating. Cosmo might be one of the last places you’d think to look for gun safety advice. But there it was, a story about a set of questions to ask a date about their gun relationship:

Do you have a gun?

How did you get it?

Why did you get it?

Where do you keep it?

Jon could have asked those questions on that night I lost him. My hope is that those of us who survive him will ask such questions in his memory. We should be talking about this so we can agree on how to act responsibly. Every young adult living in a world of guns must learn gun safety. Our first target can be talking about it, so that the lessons might come before the tragedy — and not after.

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Chapter 1: Outside the Bubble

I cannot know for certain exactly how it happened, but this is the story I can piece together after years of my own investigating.

Jon’s used Jeep Sahara rattles as it bounces along the heavily wooded road. The engine complains when it mounts the hillside, and my college son at the wheel downshifts. The pines sweep by the windows in the dark of a North Carolina night. In his rearview mirror he sees the red glow of his taillights against the trees. He watches a friend behind him following in her car. An early fall chill draws his breath out in a fog, like when he smokes. Cold out there. He hits the skip button on his iPod and that bouncy Afroman track booms over the speakers. Because I Got High. Great concert. What a party, he thinks, on a night still going strong. The blue digits of the clock on the dash move toward 2:00 as he leads the way to the house.

The gun is waiting on the hilltop, but it is not on anyone’s mind.

The Dragonfly was rocking and everybody feels fine, the afterglow of a weekend night with music and dancing. He parks on the driveway and steps out to finish his Camel, drops the butt and grinds it onto the stone under his loafer.

In this moment, he has no worries.

He swings through the door to see a girl on the couch holding something shiny. Yeah, a gun. The sounds of laughter and rap music mix with the smoke in the air, floating above the red Solo cups splashed with drinks and resting on the living room table. And there’s the Smith & Wesson, just sitting there. She is talking up a gun she’s holding while another boy hands the firearm to Jon while he listens. He hefts it, turns the Smith & Wesson’s barrel. The gun butt is rough in his palm. Maybe he feels the weapon is heavy and awkward. It snatches the light and moves on its own, alive in a way that surprises him.

Jon, be careful!

The crack cuts through the music and laughter. The gun falls.

Holy shit! Jon! The girl screams and bolts, and then outside her engine roars.

What the fuck just happened?

That’s the question I was desperate to answer. The better question was why.

I didn’t grow up in a sheltered bubble, but I later moved into one. My childhood was sometimes filled with fear, and I thought getting out of a world that could frighten me would supply the safety and protection I craved.

For most of my childhood I was a latchkey kid. There’s a smaller bubble in that arrangement. It doesn’t protect you much. My mother was a divorcee four times over, and in the times between the marriages there was always a string of boyfriends. My two sisters have a different dad than mine.

Mom’s big dreams led us to Hawaii. Living in Hawaii turned out to be dangerous for us. The things I remember are not pleasant ones, like the salty air and sand in a swimsuit from a day at the beach. My memories are of the catcalls the sailors made at Mom, an attractive divorcee, and of one Navy guy in a uniform.

One night he shoved her into the bathroom, grabbing her arm as she kicked and screamed. He tried to close the door, but I wouldn’t let him. I used a 6-year-old’s strength