Two Students Dead at Brown University. Now Comes the Hard Part.

Yesterday afternoon, a gunman walked into the Barus & Holley engineering building at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and opened fire on students taking a final exam review for an economics class. Two students are dead. Nine more were shot, most of them critically wounded. They were studying for finals. They were weeks away from winter break.

This happened on the 13th anniversary of Sandy Hook.

I'm not going to dance around what this is. This is evil. This is the kind of act that makes you want to look away, to stop watching, to pretend the world isn't capable of producing someone willing to walk into a room full of kids studying for a test and start shooting. Two families woke up this morning without their children. Nine more are sitting in hospital waiting rooms praying their kid survives. This is as bad as it gets.

Law enforcement has detained a person of interest: Benjamin Erickson, 24 years old, an Army veteran from Wisconsin. According to his LinkedIn profile, he had sniper training, served as an infantryman from 2021 to 2024, and apparently planned to attend Brown this fall. He was found at a Hampton Inn in Coventry, Rhode Island, around 3:45 this morning with two firearms, including a Glock with a laser sight. Authorities are looking into what they're describing as an "extensive mental health history." No motive has been released. No charges have been filed yet, though officials say that could happen in the coming hours.

That's what we know. Now let me tell you what I saw.

400 Officers and an Occupied Campus

More than 400 law enforcement officers flooded the Brown University campus and surrounding Providence neighborhoods last night. Four hundred. Officers in tactical gear carrying assault weapons swept through buildings, locked down an entire university, established perimeters around residential areas, and turned an Ivy League campus into something resembling a military occupation zone.

Students hid under desks with the lights off for hours. A wedding party was trapped inside a church blocks away. The entire city of Providence was told to shelter in place while a small army hunted for one man.

And look, I get it. A shooter was on the loose. People were terrified. Law enforcement had a job to do. I'm not saying they should have done nothing.

But I am saying this: When the dust settles and the cameras move on, what we saw last night is going to become the standard response. And that should concern everyone who cares about constitutional rights, because what happens in the heat of the moment becomes the blueprint for what happens next time. And the time after that. And eventually, in situations that don't warrant it at all.

This Is Where It Gets Uncomfortable

Here's the part nobody wants to hear.

Benjamin Erickson, if he is in fact the person who did this, is entitled to due process. He is entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He is entitled to competent legal representation. He is entitled to a fair trial.

I can already hear some of you: "Why are you defending this guy? Two students are dead!"

I'm not defending him. I'm defending the Constitution. There's a difference, and that difference matters more right now than it ever has.

See, this is the moment where we find out who we really are. Not when it's easy. Not when the defendant is sympathetic. Not when the evidence is ambiguous. Right now. When every instinct in our bodies screams to throw this person in a hole and forget about him.

The people who wrote the Constitution understood something that we forget in moments like this: The rights of the accused exist precisely for cases like this one. They exist because when emotions run high and grief runs deep and rage feels righteous, that's when the government is most likely to cut corners. That's when prosecutors overreach. That's when evidence gets manufactured or buried. That's when innocent people get railroaded because someone has to pay.

The presumption of innocence isn't a gift we give to people we like. It's a restraint we put on a system that has proven, over and over and over again, that it will crush people if we let it.

We Show Who We Are by What We Do Next

The person who walked into that classroom and started shooting showed us exactly who they are. They showed us the absolute worst of what a human being can become. They showed us depravity.

Now it's our turn.

We can respond with the same disregard for human dignity. We can let our rage and our grief and our fear justify anything. We can cheer while rights get trampled because it's happening to someone we've decided deserves it. We can become, in our pursuit of justice, the very thing we claim to hate.

Or we can do something harder. We can insist that even now, especially now, the rules still apply. We can demand that the prosecution build its case properly, with evidence collected legally and rights respected at every step. We can refuse to let this tragedy become the excuse for the next erosion of the protections that keep all of us safe from government overreach.

My father spent his life fighting for these principles. He went to prison for them. He was criminally prosecuted for teaching people their constitutional rights from a coffee shop. The system hated him because he insisted that due process wasn't optional, that the presumption of innocence wasn't negotiable, that the rules applied even when the government didn't want them to.

He understood something I carry with me every single day: The moment we decide that rights only matter when we feel like it, we don't have rights anymore. We have privileges that can be revoked whenever someone in power decides the situation is serious enough.

And there's always a situation serious enough.

The Families Deserve Better Than Theater

Let me be clear about something else. The families of those two students who died, the families of the nine who are fighting for their lives right now, they deserve justice. Real justice. Not performative outrage. Not a rushed prosecution that falls apart on appeal. Not a show trial designed to make politicians look tough.

They deserve a case built so carefully, so meticulously, so thoroughly within the bounds of the Constitution that there is no doubt, no appeal, no technicality that lets anyone escape accountability.

That's what due process actually provides. Not a loophole for the guilty. A guarantee that when justice is delivered, it sticks.

The system has to get this right. Not fast. Right.

What Comes Next

I'll be watching this case closely. We'll cover the proceedings as they develop. I expect charges to be filed soon. I expect this to move quickly given the public pressure.

And I will be here, every step of the way, making sure that "quickly" doesn't become "carelessly." Making sure that the understandable rage of this moment doesn't justify shortcuts that we'll all regret later. Making sure that the Constitution means something even when, especially when, it's hardest to defend.

That's what a watchdog does.

My thoughts are with the Brown University community tonight. With the families who are living every parent's worst nightmare. With the students who will never feel quite as safe on campus again. With the survivors who will carry this day with them for the rest of their lives.

This is a tragedy. An unspeakable, senseless tragedy.

And in the face of it, we have a choice about who we want to be.

Choose wisely.