Another day, another mass shooting, this time the deadliest in American history with a gay club the target. We've now had mass shootings in colleges, high schools, middle schools, grade schools, churches, workplaces, movie theaters, malls and now a nightclub, each one with a higher death toll than the last. Remember when Columbine was the deadliest mass shooting in history? Remember when Virgina Tech took over the title of deadliest shooting? Remember the uproar about changing gun laws and improving mental health programs in the aftermath of Newtown? I think the problem is that no one remembers any of those things for long. The reporting on Columbine was more extensive than the coverage of the Orlando shooting will be, in part because no one could fathom such a thing happening. We didn't know it at the time, but Columbine was ushering in a new era of gun violence. And while the US is not the only country to have mass shootings, we do hold the distinction of having an absurd amount of them. This country is supposedly the greatest nation in the world - but it is also the most violent. And we win that race by a landslide. Which is why there will be less coverage of Orlando. We've become so desensitized to these kinds of things that the latest shooting takes over the headlines for a few days or a week, and then the next big news story happens and we move on. We no longer react to mass shootings with shock, instead we ask where this one is and wait to hear what the death toll will be. The media tries to dissect the motivations behind each attack, but they always seem to mirror each other in more ways than not. There's usually some kind of mental illness or self-hate, a stockpiling of weapons, missed warning signs and the death of the shooter that prevents any real motivations from being discovered. Rinse and repeat. And it's getting ridiculous now. Actually, it's been ridiculous for a long time but once the story fades from the news, the cries for change subside. And we wait for the next shooting. People talk about change but actually changing things never seems to happen. And that's why all we do is wait for the next shooting.
Though ISIS has taken responsibility for the Orlando shooting, I suspected there was more behid it than just a simple terrorist attack. Nearly every mass shooter attacks somewhere familiar, and if a ruthless group of terrorists were behind a plot like that, they wouldn't care if the people they were killing were gay or straight. We've seen how ISIS operates, the mission is to kill as many people as possible, period. The Orlando massacre had a different ring to it and now it's being reported that the shooter may have been gay and definitely frequented the nightclub. This was a hate crime where a specific group of people were targeted, not a college kid randomly shooting at classmates. We don't yet know the Orlando shooter's motive, and we probably never will truly know it, but the news that his wife knew of his plan and did nothing to stop it is sickening. Missed warning signs are why these things keep happening, but rarely does a shooter flat out declare what his plan is, down to where he will attack and what guns he will use. This woman went with her husband and their child to scout out possible locations for the shooting, including Disney World. She went with her husband to buy ammunition for the guns he would use in the attack. As far as I'm concerned, she is responsible for the deaths of all 49 people at that club, and the law would agree. All she had to do was call 911 or walk into any police station to report her husband's plans and if she had, Sunday morning would've been like any other club outing for those unfortunate souls. I hope the wife is charged and never sees the outside of a prison for the rest of her life. But she isn't the only one to blame for what happened. How was someone on the terror watch list, who was twice brought in for questioning by the Feds, even allowed to purchase guns without a red flag going up somewhere? How is it that you can be on such a list, yet your name doesn't come up in some government database when you purchase an automatic weapon? Maybe the powers that be should spend less time monitoring the boring shit that goes on in our day to day lives and pay more attention to who's buying assault weapons.
Every time a mass shooting happens, half the country says guns kill people and the other half says people kill people. But that debate is also a part of the problem. Guns don't walk out of the store and randomly shoot people by themselves, but the fact that they are so easy to access and makes them the weapon of choice. We never hear about a mass knifing and rarely hear of a mass poisoning. Guns, particularly automatic guns, provide an easy, impersonal way of taking out as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. The Aurora theater shooting took 7 minutes and Columbine was over in less than hour, yet the death tolls in both were double digits. Obviously guns make mass shootings possible, but someone has to choose to plan and carry out that shooting. People use guns to kill other people, and the former set of people have taken a particular shine to automatic weapons that make their attacks that much more deadly. If the only guns available to a mass shooter were handguns or shotguns, they would have to alter their plan of attack dramatically since they couldn't just go in guns blazing and fire dozens of shots a second. The death tolls in these shootings would be far less, and I'd bet the number of mass shootings would decline, as has been the case in countries where guns have been more strictly regulated than they are in the US. The answer isn't to eliminate guns from society altogether, for every mass murderer who uses them to kill, there are many other people who own guns and never commit a murder. Post-9/11 the world changed dramatically overnight and part of those changes were no longer being able to take large quantities of liquids or box cutters on flights. ONE attack prompted those changes. So why is it that after multiple shootings, one in an elementary school, the automatic weapon of choice for mass shooters is still so readily available? Is it because no single shooting has killed 3,000 people? You'd think the deaths of 23 &check& children would cause some sort of change to happen. But nothing changed after Newtown. Not one damn thing. And as long as we continue to do nothing, the shootings will continue to happen. I side eye the hell out of people who don't want a ban on automatic weapons. There is absolutely no reason for a private citizen to need one and because we've seen the carnage they are capable of, I cannot fathom why people don't comprehend the root of the problem. Hiding behind the second ammendment is whatever, you can have your other guns, but fighting against a ban on automatic weapons purely for the sake of it is what keeps enabling killers to do what they do. Fuck the, "our forefathers wanted us to have guns" bullshit, they sure as hell didn't want us committing these kinds of atrocities with them. Along with that ban on automatic weapons shoud be a longer waiting period when buying any gun because, again, we've seen what happens when people buy on impulse; they shoot themselves in a depression, they shoot someone else out of rage, people do all kinds of stupid shit with guns. Will a longer waiting period stop all crimes of passion? Of course not. But it will have an impact. Will a ban on automatic weapons go a long way in preventing the next mass shooting? Absolutely.
Though ISIS has taken responsibility for the Orlando shooting, I suspected there was more behid it than just a simple terrorist attack. Nearly every mass shooter attacks somewhere familiar, and if a ruthless group of terrorists were behind a plot like that, they wouldn't care if the people they were killing were gay or straight. We've seen how ISIS operates, the mission is to kill as many people as possible, period. The Orlando massacre had a different ring to it and now it's being reported that the shooter may have been gay and definitely frequented the nightclub. This was a hate crime where a specific group of people were targeted, not a college kid randomly shooting at classmates. We don't yet know the Orlando shooter's motive, and we probably never will truly know it, but the news that his wife knew of his plan and did nothing to stop it is sickening. Missed warning signs are why these things keep happening, but rarely does a shooter flat out declare what his plan is, down to where he will attack and what guns he will use. This woman went with her husband and their child to scout out possible locations for the shooting, including Disney World. She went with her husband to buy ammunition for the guns he would use in the attack. As far as I'm concerned, she is responsible for the deaths of all 49 people at that club, and the law would agree. All she had to do was call 911 or walk into any police station to report her husband's plans and if she had, Sunday morning would've been like any other club outing for those unfortunate souls. I hope the wife is charged and never sees the outside of a prison for the rest of her life. But she isn't the only one to blame for what happened. How was someone on the terror watch list, who was twice brought in for questioning by the Feds, even allowed to purchase guns without a red flag going up somewhere? How is it that you can be on such a list, yet your name doesn't come up in some government database when you purchase an automatic weapon? Maybe the powers that be should spend less time monitoring the boring shit that goes on in our day to day lives and pay more attention to who's buying assault weapons.
Every time a mass shooting happens, half the country says guns kill people and the other half says people kill people. But that debate is also a part of the problem. Guns don't walk out of the store and randomly shoot people by themselves, but the fact that they are so easy to access and makes them the weapon of choice. We never hear about a mass knifing and rarely hear of a mass poisoning. Guns, particularly automatic guns, provide an easy, impersonal way of taking out as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. The Aurora theater shooting took 7 minutes and Columbine was over in less than hour, yet the death tolls in both were double digits. Obviously guns make mass shootings possible, but someone has to choose to plan and carry out that shooting. People use guns to kill other people, and the former set of people have taken a particular shine to automatic weapons that make their attacks that much more deadly. If the only guns available to a mass shooter were handguns or shotguns, they would have to alter their plan of attack dramatically since they couldn't just go in guns blazing and fire dozens of shots a second. The death tolls in these shootings would be far less, and I'd bet the number of mass shootings would decline, as has been the case in countries where guns have been more strictly regulated than they are in the US. The answer isn't to eliminate guns from society altogether, for every mass murderer who uses them to kill, there are many other people who own guns and never commit a murder. Post-9/11 the world changed dramatically overnight and part of those changes were no longer being able to take large quantities of liquids or box cutters on flights. ONE attack prompted those changes. So why is it that after multiple shootings, one in an elementary school, the automatic weapon of choice for mass shooters is still so readily available? Is it because no single shooting has killed 3,000 people? You'd think the deaths of 23 &check& children would cause some sort of change to happen. But nothing changed after Newtown. Not one damn thing. And as long as we continue to do nothing, the shootings will continue to happen. I side eye the hell out of people who don't want a ban on automatic weapons. There is absolutely no reason for a private citizen to need one and because we've seen the carnage they are capable of, I cannot fathom why people don't comprehend the root of the problem. Hiding behind the second ammendment is whatever, you can have your other guns, but fighting against a ban on automatic weapons purely for the sake of it is what keeps enabling killers to do what they do. Fuck the, "our forefathers wanted us to have guns" bullshit, they sure as hell didn't want us committing these kinds of atrocities with them. Along with that ban on automatic weapons shoud be a longer waiting period when buying any gun because, again, we've seen what happens when people buy on impulse; they shoot themselves in a depression, they shoot someone else out of rage, people do all kinds of stupid shit with guns. Will a longer waiting period stop all crimes of passion? Of course not. But it will have an impact. Will a ban on automatic weapons go a long way in preventing the next mass shooting? Absolutely.
If theaters, malls, schools and nightclubs are no longer safe, then worse atrocities in other public places are surely on the horizon. In the aftermath of 9/11, the airline industry took a major hit since people were afraid to fly, even afraid to go into airports. We didn't see it coming the first time, how could we know if something else was in the works? Terror attacks are meant to strike fear and cause panic, the terrorists want you afraid to go places and always looking over your shoulder. It's a two-headed monster that kills a large amount of people and traumatizes those who weren't even where the attack took place. That fear after 9/11 lingered for years, I remember discussing with my girlfriend how scared we were just to go to sleep that night, and we weren't even near NYC. I no longer go to clubs, but I can't say I'd be concerned about me or a loved one going to one after this shooting. The same way I don't think twice about going to a mall or a movie theater. Why is that? Yes, 9/11 killed far more people than any single mass shooting has so far, but a terror attack is a terror attack. Just because some unhinged kid in Connecticut commits mass murder, doesn't mean a kid somewhere else in the country won't do the same thing. It's like when someone is killed in a small town and people say, "Stuff like that doesn't happen around here," even though it just did. These shootings can happen literally anywhere; any city, any state, any public place. But we've become so numb to it, and to violence in general, that we simply mourn the dead and go on with our lives. Each shooting is a footnote in history, partially because there are so damn many of them. The same experts and analysts will be on the same news networks talking about what needs to happen in order to prevent another Orlando from happening, much like when they were talking about preventing another Newtown or Virginia Tech. Take away the guns, encourage people to report the warning signs, expand the reach of programs for the mentally ill. But none of it ever comes to fruition. How many more people, how many more kids, have to die before shit finally changes?
This latest shooting is the first one Miss N has asked questions about. She's at an age where she's comprehending the world around her in a much bigger way and asking questions about what she doesn't yet understand. Anyone who thinks guns aren't a huge part of the problem should try explaining a mass shooting to their 8-year-old. If you can do that and still come out of it believing that regulating guns would provide no benefit, then gold star for you. This kinda thing wasn't happening when I was a kid. My mom had to explain many things to us, but never why someone stormed into a public place and slaughtered dozens of people. She never had to reassure us that a trip to the movies was safe. And as much as we reassure our kids and, to some extent ourselves, that public places are safe, the reality is the next shooting could be in our own city, in a store or mall we frequent, in a school our children attend. And unfortunately, it doesn't look as if any steps will be taken to prevent the next tragedy from happening.
