Another attack at a theater today–this time in Tennessee, apparently armed with a gun, a hatchet, and pepper spray.
Apparently, this guy wanted to get everyone.
This, directly following another shooter at a theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, where two people were killed.
No one was killed in today’s attack, and I find myself exhaling only a half-sigh of relief.
This, less than two months after the shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, and just over two weeks since the shooting of two marines and a sailor in Chattanooga.
According to the Grc’s Mass Shooting Tracker, there have been 215 mass shootings this year, with a “mass shooting” defined “when four or more people are shot in an event, or related series of events, likely without a cooling off period.” (The link takes you to their main page.)
Today, the fifth of August, marks 217 days so far this year, and there have been 215 mass shootings, with only a handful of them actually making the news.
What. The. Hell.
When Columbine happened, America was in mourning. How could this happen? Everyone tried to figure out what went wrong–why it happened, how to stop it from happening again.
And now, sixteen years later, it seems like we’ve stopped trying to figure out what went wrong, why it happened, how to stop it from happening again. We’re quick to point fingers and assign blame: hate groups, religious terrorists, fanaticism, mental illness. But we’re reluctant to TRY anything.
I remember a few years ago when there was a shooting in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Perhaps my memory’s failing, but it didn’t seem that this particular shooting garnered the attention that the Charleston church did. I remember reading somewhere that the shooters believed they were killing Muslims.
Not only were they armed and hateful, but they were armed and hateful and STUPID.
This sort of violence isn’t isolated: it isn’t limited to one religious group, one race, one subset of the population. This is systemic, this complete lack of respect for life. A desire to not just put down, but to actually kill another human being. This is a disease in our blood, that courses through our veins, and the violence is merely a manifestation of a much deeper disease.
Like a staph infection.
Lyrical Fool 