It was in early December, right after the San Bernardino shooting, that a Facebook friend of mine posted a comment about the need for gun control. One of the people who responded to the post was Gregory Gibson, an antiquarian bookseller who wrote a book about his own son's murder–a mass shooting at Simon's Rock College, Great Barrington, Massachusetts on December 14, 1992.

I ordered a copy of his book on the 5th of December, and it arrived a few days later. Now I have read true crime books where the writers investigate the murder and the murderer, and while I can't say that I enjoy reading them, I do find them to be interesting reading. But to read a book written by a father about his own son's murder—that was something I didn't know if I was prepared for.

Read it, I did, over the holidays. But review it, I could not. I was at a loss for words. What do I say about a father who writes a book about losing his son to gun violence? Good book? Compelling reading? It would take months before I wrote this review.

Gregory Gibson wanted to know the "how" and the "why" of his son's murder. He attended the trial. And afterwards, he investigated the murder on his own: How, when and where the murderer, a student at Simon's Rock College, obtained the murder weapon, an SKS Chinese Type 56 Carbine, which accepted a thirty-round magazine. How the killer modified the gun. What the killer did on the day of the murder. The actions and inactions of the officials at Simon's Rock College on the day of the murder concerning the killer's receipt of his mail order ammunition.

Gregory Gibson went so far as to interview the court psychiatrists, the witnesses to the shooting, the shooter's parents, and the shooter himself. He researched the history of the manufacture, importation, and modification of the murder weapon itself–the killer modified the gun and replaced the ten-round magazine with a thirty-round magazine. This magazine did not lock into place, causing the gun to jam. If not, there would have been more victims than there were.

Seemingly, Gregory Gibson looked into anything and everything pertaining to his son's murder to try to understand and answer one question: Why?

In his chapter concerning the killer's gun, Gibson wrote about the guns that were made back when the Second Amendment was written. Back then, it would take a marksman two minutes to load and fire four or five rounds. Nowadays, a shooter can empty a thirty-round magazine in the blink of an eye. Gibson concludes the chapter with these words:
The 'arms' that the founding fathers thought about keeping and bearing didn't need defining in 1800.

They do now.

On the eve of the twenty-third anniversary of his son's murder, on the Timeline of his Facebook page, and on his Bookman's Log, Gregory Gibson posted some questions for Wayne LaPierre and the NRA:

America needs to respond to that last question. And now.

I finally reviewed the book in July 2016:

https://contemplationsofmoibibliomaniac.blogspot.com/2016/07/gone-boy-walkabout-...

I once read an article about the parents of murdered children. The article opened by asking how one gets over such a tragedy, and concludes that mostly, one doesn't.

This is an extraordinary book. After taking voluminous notes at the trial of his son's murderer, Gregory Gibson decided to continue to amass information about the case, and to write a book, hoping this way to deal with his grief. Although the book was presumably written at the end of the time covered, it conveys a sense of the journey. Gibson tells us the ideas and expectations that he had, even when he later decides that they silly or unrealistic. He meets with a large number of people: the college administrators, mostly unhelpful; the man who sold the gun to the murderer; the original owner of the gun who gives Gibson a stack of articles defending gun ownership; friends of both his son and the murderer; other victims of the shooting; and the parents of the killer who welcomes the opportunity to tell the Gibsons how sorry they were. Gibson meets all of them with respect and sympathy, except for the college administrators who were mostly concerned with avoiding any blame. We are granted real insight into the grieving process, and it is a privilege. ( )

An affecting and honest story of how one family, and specifically one father, absorbed the death of a son by random violence. ( )