Thousand Oaks Club Shooting Evokes Route 91 Harvest Tragedy

AP Photo / Mark J. Terrill – Borderline Shooting
People comfort each other as they sit near the scene Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018, in Thousand Oaks, Calif. where a gunman opened fire Wednesday inside a country dance bar crowded with hundreds of people on “college night,” wounding 11 people including a deputy who rushed to the scene. Ventura County sheriff

The latest concert-venue shooting, late Nov. 7 at college night at country nightclub Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, Calif., is a stark reminder of the fragility of life and commitment to security at events of all sizes. 

Armed with a smoke bomb and handgun, a former Marine dressed in all black opened fire during college night at the Borderline, an active concert venue that has in recent months hosted artists including Jerrod Niemann, Rita Wilson and Adam Carolla. Thirteen lives were lost, including the gunman and a veteran sheriff’s sergeant who Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said was the first officer responding to the shooting. 

The killer has been identified as Ian David Long, a 28-year-old veteran who authorities said had an episode of erratic behavior thought to be due to post-traumatic stress disorder related to his military background.

As the American public seems to become somewhat desensitized – or at least overwhelmed to the point of exhaustion – by mass shootings, with 17 students and teachers killed at a Parkland, Fla., high school nine months ago, and 11 people massacred at a synagogue in Pittsburgh just weeks ago, any casualty at a concert venue is a blow to the live music industry. 

The Route 91 Harvest shooting from the Las Vegas Strip from Oct. 1 of 2017 remains the most high-profile and publicly horrific concert tragedy in recent memory, with an unknown assailant raining bullets perched from one of seemingly endless hotel windows above. 

During the “From Manchester to Route 91: What Have We Learned?” discussion at Pollstar Live in February, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department undersheriff Kevin McMahill underscored the need of local police to work with event organizers and concert venues.

“We don’t spend enough time in the prevent realm,” McMahill said. “As law enforcement, we have been struggling for a very long time on how we can be effective on this prevent mission. I think the key really relies on folks like yourself,” he said, referring to the audience of concert industry professionals. 

Major media outlets including the Los Angeles Times say some attending the Nov. 7 country night in Thousand Oaks, about 40 miles west of Los Angeles were also at the Las Vegas shooting last year.  

KABC via AP – Thousand Oaks Tragedy
This image made from aerial video show officers around a Police SUV in the vicinity of a shooting in Thousand Oaks, California, early Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018. Authorities say there were multiple injuries – including one officer – after a man opened fire in Southern California bar late Wednesday.

“A lot of people in the Route 91 situation go here,” Chandler Gunn, 23, told the Los Angeles Times. “There’s people that live a whole lifetime without seeing this, and then there’s people that have seen it twice.”

Another young man, Carl Edgar, 24, said friends of his survived the Route 91 shooting as well as the Thousand Oaks massacre last night, reportedly telling the Times, “If they survived that, they’ll survive this.”

The shooting brings back the horror of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., in which 49 were killed in a what was deemed a terrorist attack at the gay bar in June 2016. A motive hasn’t been determined in the Borderline shooting. 

While skirmishes often take place near nightclubs or concert venues, this appears to be a planned attack targeting complete strangers out for a good time. 

Yet, violence comes in many forms, as in November 2015 Paris was under siege, with terrorists storming Le Bataclan theatre during an Eagles Of Death Metal concert and executing hostages methodically, with 90 people murdered. In May of 2017, a bomb was detonated outside an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in England, killing 22 people.

However, terror need not be defined by committed by a foreigner or construed as being conducted for religious reasons, as the millions affected by Route 91 and, now, tragically, the Borderline, can attest.