James Fallows, The Atlantic:
Five years ago, after what was the horrific mass shooting of that moment, I wrote an item called “The Certainty of More Shootings.” It was about the massacre in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and after acknowledging the victims it said:
The additional sad, horrifying, and appalling point is the shared American knowledge that, beyond any doubt, this will happen again, and that it will happen in America many, many times before it occurs anywhere else.
WaPo:
949 victims
Each gun was used to kill an average of four people, not counting shooters. The 949 people came from nearly every imaginable race, religion and socioeconomic background, and 145 were children or teenagers.
The oldest victim
Louise De Kler, 98, still took her pool cue and boombox to the rec room at Pinelake Health and Rehab and shot pool with the “young guys,” her daughter told the Associated Press. She was shot to death on March 29, 2009, along with seven other residents and a nurse, by a man who had come to the Carthage, N.C., nursing home looking for his estranged wife.
Five years ago, after what was the horrific mass shooting of that moment, I wrote an item called “The Certainty of More Shootings.” It was about the massacre in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and after acknowledging the victims it said:
The additional sad, horrifying, and appalling point is the shared American knowledge that, beyond any doubt, this will happen again, and that it will happen in America many, many times before it occurs anywhere else.
And here we are, two days after Las Vegas, and we're being distracted by Press Poodles alternately concentrating on people's grief and/or the technical details of how the fucking gun works, and worse - the bullshit about "maybe something good can come from this senseless tragedy and blah blah blah".
No.
We choose to do nothing. We choose to listen to the passive voice - "Mistakes were made" or "Isn't it just awful" or
Nothing will come of this enormous horror except the next (nearly-identical) enormous horror.
Something else that pops up now and again - and is purposefully ignored: "...the worst mass killing in modern American history..."
I'm not giving partial credit on this one. It's the worst mass killing since Wounded Knee, which was the worst mass killing since Sand Creek, which was the worst mass killing since Trail of Tears...and on it goes.
But OK - we don't need to look at anything but the last 50 years to be duly impressed with our diligence when it comes to murdering each other in large numbers.
949 victims
Each gun was used to kill an average of four people, not counting shooters. The 949 people came from nearly every imaginable race, religion and socioeconomic background, and 145 were children or teenagers.
Louise De Kler, 98, still took her pool cue and boombox to the rec room at Pinelake Health and Rehab and shot pool with the “young guys,” her daughter told the Associated Press. She was shot to death on March 29, 2009, along with seven other residents and a nurse, by a man who had come to the Carthage, N.C., nursing home looking for his estranged wife.
There's a very enlightening infographic that you need to see.
So this thing is big and ugly and complicated, and it goes in 37 different directions - sometimes all at once. But I'm not interested in hearing about how we just can't do anything about it.
We sent 14 guys to the moon - 12 of them walked on its surface - on the fucking moon. And we got 'em all back, and we did it when we were working out the math using slide rules and pencils and chalkboards - bear skins and stone knives compared with what we can do now.
We're closing in on Autism and PTSD and Alzheimer's.
Don't tell me we can't get this done.
Here's a pretty good place to start:
