Police at the scene of a mass shooting at Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, November 20, 2014 (CNN)
I participated in a documentary of Ireland’s RTE Televsion, “In Search of Safety”, about the pursuit of emotional as well as physical security in the US culture of guns and violence.
The documentary features the testimony of Nadia Ramoutar, who survived an attempted abduction on her university campus in the US in the late 1980s. In 2014, her son Devin Reardon narrowly escaped a mass shooting at Florida State University.
I offer context, tracing the escalation of violence in the US from the 1960s to today: “America has always been a violent society. You have to be able to shoot ’em dead. That’s the whole myth of the American West that replays our history for us.”
The documentary is produced and narrated by Donal O’Herlihy.
