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Mass Shootings are as American as Apple Pie
Why thoughts and prayers are not enough
It was just after 7:00 AM on the East Coast, and I picked up my phone to check the morning’s news. There was another mass shooting, this one in a Walmart in Chesapeake in my own state of Virginia. This follows the recent mass shooting in a nightclub in Colorado and another also in Virginia in Charlottesville. Sigh.
“How shocking it was to wake up to the news of yet another mass shooting!” said no one ever in America.
How did we get to this place where we are so desensitized to these repeated acts of violence that they simply roll off our backs like nothing? Finding ourselves saying, “That’s too bad,” shrugging it off, and carrying on with our lives. It’s really a survival tactic.
With political pundits eager to make these events not about guns, but the people who own them, the only panacea offered is “thoughts and prayers.” But really, it’s about guns.
The United States currently has more guns than people. That’s not an assumption. That’s real. Why do we need so many guns? And why are they so easy to buy?
The answer to reducing gun violence is not the presence of more guns, especially in our schools, but reducing access to guns in the first place, especially for people who have no business owning one in…
