Man Who Survived the Thousand Oaks Shooting Says All There Is to Say

A gunman walked into the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California on Wednesday and murdered 12 people without saying a word. Many of them were college students from nearby Pepperdine University; it was an 18-and-over country line dancing night. As authorities continue to identify victims, the families of patrons who haven't heard from their kids yet fear the worst. Their phones just ring to voicemail. "We’re trying to make sense out of the senseless," said a Ventura County sheriff's spokesperson, invoking a line that is repeated in some form or another after every one of this country's gun massacres—a mantra to cope with the overpowering sense of helplessness.

This interview, conducted at the scene with Tim Dominguez, who was at the bar with his stepson when the shooting began, is one of the most gutting things I've ever seen. "I thought it was a joke," he begins. His voice breaks each time he recounts watching from the ground as the killer took another life, and he couldn't stop thinking about one thing they had in common: their age. "He shot the front doorman, bouncer. Just a young man. He shot the cashier. Just a young girl... He didn't say anything at all. He just started shooting."

Then, Dominguez—a man who just survived a mass shooting—begins apologizing, profusely, for failing to stop it from happening. "I should have stayed until he changed a clip," he says. "I was worried about my boy. But I should have stayed. I apologize to anybody who got hurt. I'm sorry."

The reporter quickly (and correctly) tells him that there was nothing he could have done to make the situation better. This assurance is of no comfort to Dominguez. "But they're all young. I'm 56," he says. "I lived a life. They're all so young. This shouldn't happen to them... They're kids, just kids. I'm so sorry." He says it over and over.

There is a fair argument to be made here that victims should be given time and space and privacy to process what just happened to them—that ratings-hungry journalists thrusting microphones and cameras in front of their faces is exploitative and cruel. But it is also true that sooner or later, this country must be forced to face the human consequences of its centuries-long obsession with firearms, and that staid newspaper articles and chyron body counts will never be as effective at this task as even a brief glimpse into this uniquely American combination of grief, despair, fear, and remorse.

Consider the heartbreaking implication of Dominguez's conclusion: This country has arrived at a point at which these tragedies are so commonplace that survivors feel compelled to apologize for not instinctively and instantaneously throwing their bodies in front of bullets, saving the lives of strangers who, like them, were just out at a bar with family and friends, having a good time. They apologize for thinking first for their children, and not for the children of others. They apologize for who they are, and for what they are not—trained law enforcement officers, or active-duty servicemembers, or expert marksmen, or plucky superheroes who take down a killer using only their wits and barroom furniture. They apologize for being panicked, terrified human beings, who did what anyone else in their shoes would have done, and who will be racked by guilt for the rest of their lives because of it.

That guilt shouldn't be theirs. It belongs to the lawmakers who are entrusted with keeping Americans safe—the same ones who then take a look at the epidemic of gun violence in this country, and conclude that there is nothing more to be done.