Shots Fired in Terminal 2: A Witness to the Fort Lauderdale Airport Shooting Reflects on America's Mass Shooting Epidemic

by William Elliott Hazelgrove

Overview

On January 6, 2017, a lone gunman took five lives and wounded eight people at Fort Lauderdale Airport. This book is about the Lauderdale shooting told from the perspective of bestselling author William Hazelgrove, who just happened to be there with his wife and children. Though focused on one terrifying incident that the author witnessed, this story is also a prototype of American shootings showing the interplay of victims, police, media, the shooter, and what constitutes this peculiar American form of violence. The author documents the perverse chain of events that set the stage for this tragedy: the failure of police and the FBI to stop this troubled Iraq War veteran, who had earlier approached them and said point-blank that he was hearing voices telling him to kill others; the incredible fact that his weapon was taken and then given back to him, the very gun that would kill five people and shut down a major airport for forty-eight hours; and the circumstances of American society that allowed this gun to be checked through airport security as a legal firearm and then delivered to the killer, who casually strolled into a bathroom, loaded the pistol, and returned to the baggage claim area to start his murderous rampage. Interweaving his dramatic telling of his own experiences with a history of comparable shootings in America, the book presents both an anatomy of these horrifying events and the basis for understanding why they happen and what can be done to stop them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781633883833
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	08/07/2018
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

William Hazelgrove is a bestselling author whose books include Wright Brothers, Wrong Story: How Wilbur Wright Solved the Problem of Manned Flight; Madam President: The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson; Forging a President: How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt; and Al Capone and the 1933 World's Fair. His books have hit the National Bestseller List, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist, and have been included in Book of the Month Selections, Literary Guild Selections, Junior Library Guild Selections, and ALA Editor's Choice Awards. He was the Ernest Hemingway Writer-in-Residence where he wrote in the attic of Ernest Hemingway's birthplace. He has written articles and reviews for USA Today and other publications. He has been the subject of interviews in NPR's All Things Considered along with features in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, Richmond Times Dispatch, USA Today, People, Channel 11, NBC, WBEZ, and WGN. He runs a political cultural blog, "The View from Hemingway's Attic" (www.theviewfromhemingwaysattic.com).

Read an Excerpt

Note to the Reader
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Shots Fired in Terminal 2"
by .
Copyright © 2018 William Hazelgrove.
Excerpted by permission of Prometheus Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Note to the Reader 11

Prologue 13

Chapter 1 Reentry (January 6, 2017, 5:00 a.m.) 15

Chapter 2 The American Payoff 21

Chapter 3 Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport 25

Chapter 4 Weaponized Humans 29

Chapter 5 Baggage Claim Terminal 2 (12:50 p.m.) 33

Chapter 6 Terminal 1 (1:06 p.m.) 37

Chapter 7 The Right to Bear Arms: A Liberal Idea 45

Chapter 8 Grace Under Pressure (1:20 p.m.) 51

Chapter 9 One in Three Hundred and Fifteen (1:45 p.m.) 59

Chapter 10 The First Mass Murder (1949) 65

Chapter 11 The Feeding Frenzy (2:00 p.m.) 69

Chapter 12 Fifteen Minutes of Fame (2:30 p.m.) 77

Chapter 13 The Texas Tower Sniper (1966) 79

Chapter 14 Outside Terminal 2 (3:00 p.m.) 87

Chapter 15 Chicken Nuggets: The McDonald's Shooting (1984) 91

Chapter 16 Shell Shock (3:30 p.m.) 97

Chapter 17 A Short History of the Gun 105

Chapter 18 Return to Terminal 1 (4:00 p.m.) 115

Chapter 19 Cowboys and Indians 123

Chapter 20 No Escape (5:00 p.m.) 131

Chapter 21 A Short History of the NRA 139

Chapter 22 Casablanca (7:00 p.m.) 145

Chapter 23 Columbine (1999) 153

Chapter 24 Escape from FLL (9:00 p.m.) 163

Chapter 25 Taxi Driver (1981) 169

Chapter 26 The Warriors (10:00 p.m.) 173

Chapter 27 The Worst: Sandy Hook (2012) 179

Chapter 28 Port Everglades (11:00 p.m.) 185

Chapter 29 Quality Inn (11:30 p.m.) 191

Chapter 30 Virginia Tech (2007) 195

Chapter 31 Swimming Up from the Deep (Midnight) 199

Chapter 32 The Dark Knight (2012) 203

Chapter 33 Victims (January 7, 2017, 9:00 a.m.) 207

Chapter 34 The Survivor (2011) 213

Chapter 35 The Horror (January 8, 2017, 2:00 p.m.) 217

Chapter 36 The Bump Stock Killer: Las Vegas (2017) 221

Chapter 37 Home (January 9, 2017) 225

Chapter 38 A Professional School Shooter: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (2018) 229

Chapter 39 Males Who Fail 235

Chapter 40 Twelve Hours of Chaos 239

Acknowledgments 245

Notes 247

Editorial Reviews

"A riveting account of the terror and panic experienced by those present during the Fort Lauderdale airport mass shooting. Intensifying the experience was the exploitative media and the suspicious police, who were uncertain as to the presence of additional shooters. The resulting chaos and the throngs of passengers caught in the middle demonstrate the perils of allowing armed citizens into such venues. Hazelgrove also provides insight into the less-tangible psychological impact of such events on witnesses. This must-read book is greatly enriched by numerous short chapters on some of America’s previous mass shootings, the Second Amendment, and America’s gun culture.” —Thomas Gabor, PhD, is a criminologist and author of Confronting Gun Violence in America “A spellbinding and gripping account of one family’s terror at being caught up in a mass shooting, and how such an event can change lives forever. A master storyteller, Hazelgrove expertly weaves the personal dramas of the incident with vivid accounts of past shooting attacks and offers recommendations for what needs to be done to deal with this growing problem. An important and fascinating book.”   —Jeffrey D. Simon, PhD, author of Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat   “Hazelgrove provides a ground-level view of gun violence, experienced firsthand, and uses it as a springboard to examine mass shootings, gun habits, the media, the NRA, and much more. Hazelgrove writes in a straightforward, unadorned style that brings the reader along with him on a whirlwind tour of Americans and their guns. This is a unique and engaging book.”   —Robert J. Spitzer, Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, SUNY Cortland, and author of The Politics of Gun Control and Guns across America “[This] book uses the Fort Lauderdale incident as a frame, but its real subject ismass shootings in the U.S.. .. . Hazelgrove is a talented writer, and it is impossible to read this deeply personal, questioning, powerful book without feeling sadness both for the victims of mass shootings but also, perhaps counterintuitively, for the shooters themselves, who might have followed a different course if they had received help when they needed it.”              —Booklist 

From the Publisher