Michael Paterniti

Can't wait to read this whole issue, but was v. fun to relive my underwater days for @caitlinroper and the Mag...

. @caitlinroper

Longer, warmer days are finally here. For THE NEW YORK TIMES HITS THE BEACH, a special section in the paper this Sunday, 6/2, we asked five writers about the best summers of their lives. By @HeidiJulavits @MikePaterniti @bycdl @RowanRicardo Karen Russell https://t.co/vI68uPzXiE

Is it too early to declare a best article of 2019? Mine belongs to @jadabird: 1 Woman, 12 Months, 52 Places https://t.co/xINNlLNiHd

After taking a trolley ride deep into Misty Mountain with Martin Kunze, I fear the apocalypse a little less now... And the pastries in Gmunden, Austria were insane!

GQ Magazine @GQMagazine

“Theoretically, no one can take it,” Martin Kunze said. “The future finders will be the owners.” https://t.co/oDlLt4HJGX

Psyched to see the @Cordurb0ys at Mamm Slam comp TODAY @ Empire, 1:30! Vote for them here: https://t.co/MXvy60lv5O https://t.co/zqd2y0ANA8

Cordurboys @Cordurb0ys

https://t.co/P7hzQJIVO5

Amazing story, amazing words... total must-read! How a Young Woman Lost Her Identity https://t.co/s4vRwNJTQd

The cost of bearing witness: incredible NYT piece by Fatima Faizi, and suicide bombings... https://t.co/2FaRdV019p

Melissa, who supports mental health checks, is a smart, feeling person who is willing to listen and consider, rather than rotely accept what have become the norms. She seems to be among the best hopes we have. https://t.co/J4UWX7AhIk

He’s a successful businessman, and even though he lost his late wife to his way of life, he remains undeterred. One bit of light in this story was his daughter Melissa, who one day will inherit it all—the gun shop, shooting range, and military museum.

And these questions also shed some light on how the financial stake here is large, and wildly opposed to change. What I found with Dragonman was more complicated than what I first imagined.

One of the main questions being: Should there be a moral obligation for independent gun dealers like Dragonman to re-consider what kind of weapons they sell, and to whom, and at what age?

So, Dragonman was a way to look into this otherworld of weapons suppliers, and try to understand a gun dealer on his own terms, in the flow of his own life, uncensored and in the throes of getting rich off the sales of weapons—including some he refers to as “people-hunting guns.”

These were all part of the same tragedy, full of different details, but all leaving incredible carnage, loss, and lots of questions in their wake. And after the recent shootings in Parkland, those questions are back—and focused on our laws and supply chain.

I arrived in San Bernardino on the day of that massacre, which claimed 14 lives, plus the shooters. Then I reported back through Sandy Hook to meet with parents of the young victims there, and then it was back to Columbine, where I interviewed Dylan Klebold’s mother, Sue.

These memories carried forward to a 2016 GQ article, in which for better or worse, I tracked a week of mass shootings in America. https://t.co/jC5nEa3Fyl

I remember Brooks Brown, who knew the Columbine shooters and was originally thought to be a suspect and wrongly accused, sitting in a basement, playing video games, with his life in total shambles. He hadn't even been shot, but he had nothing.

Despite the two-week media cycle that usually surrounds these events, ending in "healing" and all of us turning back to Words with Friends and hilarious pet videos, there was nothing but devastation.

In 1999, I flew to Columbine on the day of that shooting for an Esquire assignment. It left such a haunting impression that I returned five years later to report on the aftermath for GQ—one of the most intensely dark articles I’ve ever written. https://t.co/OWpuJU3kRZ