Mass Shootings: Live With It?

 Today is the anniversary of the Allies invasion of Normandy in 1944.  I remember the 50^th anniversary and feeling amazed by how many years had passed.  In two years, it’ll be 80 years.  I saw “The Longest Day” when I was a kid in the 60s.  I thought it was a great movie but not too long ago, when I saw it again, I was saddened at all the lives lost.  My first dh Rich and I went to see “Saving Private Ryan” when we took a weekend vacation in 1998 or 99.  I couldn’t sit through the whole movie.  It was just too realistic.  I couldn’t handle the blood and gore.

Those rifles the soldiers used then weren’t like the automatics we have today but they were heavy duty and meant to kill people.  The automatic rifles some people like aren’t meant for hunting or protection.  Those weapons are to kill a lot of people fast, inflicting devastating and mutilating damage on the human body.

This morning I read an opinion piece by one of the surviving students from the Columbine High School massacre back in 1999.  I’d heard of mass shootings before but they were usually associated with organized crime hits.  These weren’t hardened hit men.  They were misfit teens who went into their school and started shooting.  They killed themselves.   The carnage was shocking.  We were all horrified by this awful tragedy but too soon it was forgotten. It was just one of those once in a lifetime things, right?

Wrong.  This is a list of school shootings since Columbine. https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2022-05-24/a-look-at-some-of-the-deadliest-us-school-shootings They just list the deadliest, which killed 169 children.  This only happens in this country.  Other countries have sensible gun laws and the number one killer of children is not gun violence.  But here, in the US, gun violence kills more kids than car accidents.  It kills more kids than cancer.  The statistic is absolutely monstrous.

Craig Nelson wrote the column about gun violence and surviving Columbine.  He was 17 years old then and recalled the trauma of friends being killed while he and other classmates hid.  Now he is the father of four children and this could likely happen again and to one of his children. 

That’s because, lately, it seems mass shootings have become the “new norm”.  You don’t know if it’ll happen at the grocery store or the movies or a clinic or a mall or a concert or a church or a parking lot or night club … you don’t know where and when the next one will happen.  It’s bad enough the Rethuglicans refuse to do anything about gun control reform.  Now there’s a new poll:  almost half of the formerly respectable Republicans think we have to just live with mass shootings.

My brain is exploding.  My brain is being overloaded with: shock, disbelief, outrage.  I think those people need to see pictures of the Alverde kids and Buffalo seniors who were killed with those vicious, deadly AR-15s.  Completely mind boggling.

Mr. Nelson had suggestions about what we can do instead of just sitting on our hands, shaking our heads.

This has to be politicized.  Those of us who are tired of children being shot up in schools and people of color being slaughtered at churches and grocery stores need to get up and use our voices.  Join a protest march.  Go to your local government council meeting.  Call your senators.  Call your representative.  Volunteer to help elect people who will be willing to make a change.  If we sit back and do nothing, it’s like condoning gun violence.

Mass shootings, the new norm?  Is that who we are?  Is that who we want to be? Check out Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States

Mr. Nelson’s opinion piece: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/survived-columbine-school-shooting-watched-uvalde-repeat-cycle-death-rcna31338?cid=eml_nbn_20220605&user_email=13660bfeb26f12d44f84b122ca5ed8d5f1acd1ca439a25e7fe835ee487c11d11&%243p=e_sailthru&_branch_match_id=897534115306322423&utm_medium=Email%20Sailthru&_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAAzVO7WrEIBB8GvvPJH4klxaOUij3GkHXzSlnVPxI6NvX%2Figss8PszjC21lQ%2BxjFoCHiVQaU0eBdeo0ifhEuR7rgV5Xy1ub11IWb3dEH5rWV%2Ft39mIr4If%2FS5rmv4j4F4dKXantR3TC64GDorLZ%2FuREMh%2BnZoF5AWsDF6WjpWF570UhVs%2F2in8gZpxoSqUvgBj9R0ammGoAQTYiXiAc4Q8Y2H34IOG584n5ZpJnxpBfOGR6%2Fe70wsy6R31HzZGTdS7qvUjHNQM5rVzDtTYBgoKd4Vn%2FG24ypmRLnegDHD2C9Kxm%2BmJgEAAA%3D%3D