The Shootings in Aurora, Colorado

There is just too much damn violence in this country!


I'm sorry, but we do have a serious problem with violence in this country, in particular. Nowhere else in the world do they have seemingly random shootings with such a degree of regularity. This is a suburb of Denver, probably not too far from another suburb, Littleton, which was the site of the Columbine shootings. As of right now, fourteen are reported dead, and at least twenty (possibly fifty) injured. The numbers seem to be rising as the night wears on. Thoughts are with the victims and their families at the moment.

At the premiere of a highly anticipated movie, Batman: The Dark Knight Rises, there was a massive shooting in Aurora, Colorado. People we very excited to see this movie, which many predicted to be the summer blockbuster of the year. The shooting occurred, evidently, during a shooting scene, according to news reports (but that may be subject to change as more facts become clearer) which was loud to begin with, so the sounds of shots fired confused people. No one could be sure if it was part of the movie, or if the shooting was happening right there in the theater, or if it was somehow a sick publicity stunt. By the time that people understood this was no stunt or gimmick, people had died already. Many more were injured.

The shooter was wearing a gas mask he released tear gas (again, according to reports that I heard), presumably to create chaos and confusion. He went into movie theater #9, and started shooting rather randomly, after first releasing some kind of canister that filled the room with smoke. Initial reports suggested that it had been tear gas, but then they backed away from that, and said it had caused some smoky conditions. The man then began to shoot, and given the rather violent nature of the movie that people had gathered to see, some dismissed it as just a spectacle. He shot people at random, people he did not know, presumably, personally. Strangers were shot. Kids were shot. I heard even a baby was shot in the back.

Of course, not too far from the location of this shooting is Littleton, Colorado, the site of probably the most famous school shooting in history, the 1999 Columbine school shootings.

When are we going to admit that we have a problem? We take these as isolated incidents. I was at work when this shooting broke out, and I live in New Jersey. The reaction was often detached. The first time I heard about it was from a coworker who told me the news, and followed it up with a smile, as he said, "Nice!". The same guy later was saying that he hoped this was some guy of "Middle Eastern descent", perhaps especially "from Iran", perhaps already using this tragedy to stoke the flames of yet another war. But, he claimed, he had a sick feeling that it was some "local", as he put it. Another genius said, "So long as it stays over there!" he said (meaning Colorado), waving his hand towards the television screen, as if it just stays that far away geographically, then it's not really a problem that should concern us. Many suggested that people are "weird" and have a problem in Colorado. Stupid stereotypes that go a long way towards distancing themselves and the world that they know, and isolating this particular shooting, and perhaps such shootings in general, as someone else's problem, but nothing that they should really worry about.

One problem with such thinking, of course, if that it does not tend to just stay "there". In Bloomingdale, a town I used to live in, there was a plot similar to Columbine that was thwarted, evidently. I do not know how close they were to actually executing the plan, but just the thought is chilling.

Now, I am not going to talk about how such a thing was seemingly unthinkable back when I was in high school. I am not that old, having graduated in 1992, but all of these school shootings began a few years later, and they seemed to have gained momentum. By the 1990's, there were school shootings and other shootings, seemingly every few weeks. It comes, and it goes.

But when such a shooting becomes just another news piece, when it becomes something that you can compare to with other such incidents over the years and, pretty soon, decades, then there is something seriously wrong. I mean, come on! Think about such massive, and seemingly random, mass shootings, and it really is staggering. We know it happens in other countries, granted. But when it does, life stops there for a while. When some Scottish lunatic goes into a preschool, if memory serves me correctly, and opens fire on innocent little children, life stands still, similarly to September 11th. When there is a school shooting in some rural Canadian community, life stands still for our northern neighbors. When there is a massive school shooting in Germany, life stands still. And last year, when there is a bombing in the capital, followed by a massive shooting on an island that is hosting a party youth conference, and something in the neighborhood of almost eighty people are killed, even if it is the action of one lone man, a lunatic, still nonetheless life stands still.

Here in the United States, things like that happen very often, and life goes on pretty much as normal. There were a series of school shootings in the nineties and early 2000’s, in places like Jonesboro or Flint. But the only one that we collectively really remember is Columbine, because of the unprecedented scale of it. It becomes the dominant news item for a while, but then largely goes away. When there is a school shooting done by a very young child in Flint, the head of the NRA goes to Michigan almost immediately afterwards to make sure that the main issue according to him, the right to bear arms, is not threatened in any way. Very quickly, it becomes a political football, and not just a tragedy- one of many that we have seen, and just yet another one that we chalk up as the actions either of some mad man or mad teens (or in this case, some child who did not know what he was doing). Yes, very quickly, it simply becomes an event that is used for flavor of the moment political debates.

We have seen shootings on a massive scale, all across the country, and in various different settings. Whether it is on a military base, a school out in Colorado or Arkansas (or numerous other states that have seen similar such murders), some office building somewhere, a political event in Arizona, or now, a movie theater in Colorado, showing the latest highly anticipated summer blockbuster, these shootings seem to just come and go. So familiar have we become with these events that they become part of our landscape, some kind of news piece that is not exclusive to America in terms of the actual shootings, but becomes exclusively American in terms of the number of such events that we have. It bears repeating: nowhere else do they have such random shootings as what we see here.

How often are we going to watch scenes from a helicopter, or live news reporters, reporting on the latest shooting, before we collectively acknowledge that this really is not normal, and that we have a problem?

Sooner or later, people are probably going to get tired of this story, much like they get tired of other such stories. That's what happens, because the media pounces on it, and never lets it go. The story will go on and on, angled differently here and there, and people will get sick of it. People will move on. They may not say it too boldly or loudly. They may say it in quiet tones, something like, “I feel bad for the victims and their families, and it was a horrible tragedy, but do we need to hear about it every day? I’m just going to be glad when we don’t have to keep hearing about it, already.”

Of course, the media sensationalizes these types of stories. For them, it is an opportunity to promote themselves. For reporters on the scene, it becomes an opportunity to shine in the limelight of their career, to prove themselves, or perhaps to make a name for themselves. Since most new stories tend to be mundane, it almost seems like the news stations and publications perk up when something like this occurs to capture the public imagination on an otherwise slow news day. They go on and on with the story, giving us details about the event as it unfolds, and then analyzing it over and over again, giving us what information they receive as soon as they receive it. People that were there are interviewed, and then we learn more about the victims and their families. We learn the identity of the shooter, and almost always, we hear about how quiet and unassuming they were in their real life prior to the event, by people who knew them personally. We learn about memorial services, and how lives begin to readjust. Eventually, it kind of just fades away, becomes just another part of our past. Maybe it will make the list as ranking among the most memorable moments of the year, or even of the decade – such as the Columbine shootings, or surely, the Norway attacks last year – mostly because of the scale, when they are very big. Or, perhaps, there will be a famous victim, such as the shooting at Arizona last year, when a Congresswoman was shot.

This shooting in Colorado has already become a media spectacle, quite predictably. It has and will continue to dominate our news for a few days, and perhaps eventually even weeks. But I wonder if that means that we will seriously assess what happened and the reasons for it, or if it will just become another curious conversation piece, something that gets people to talk. Another opportunity for people to clear their throat and then voice their opinions on a subject. In other words, we are, collectively, so detached from such an event, that we weigh in on it for our own purposes, without the reality of it ever actually being recognized. For most of us, it becomes much like a movie. It all seems so surreal. The media covers it, and despite their solemn faces and tones, it almost becomes like entertainment. We use it the way that we want to use it, for our own purposes. Maybe to stoke our morbid fascination, to have it front and center for a brief while, until we get bored with it and move on. The reality of this tragedy is being felt in Aurora and surrounding communities, of course. Almost everywhere else, however, lives are so detached that this will seem remote, and thus, relegated to a curiosity, a mere conversation piece, however morbid. It will be used, much like everything else in our society is used.

And that’s the real problem with events like this, isn’t it? They have happened so frequently, that we discuss them as just part of our everyday reality, which is another way of saying that we have come to accept them as part of our society. It’s just something that happens from time to time. Somebody goes nuts, gets a few guns or home made bombs ready, and then makes the news. It is relegated to entertainment of a different sort, when news programs cancel scheduled programming to bring us the latest on this “developing” or “breaking” news story. We are looking at the symptoms and weighing in, but hardly anybody is discussing the larger sickness itself, because the answers are not easy. They take time to diagnose, and time to try and address in a serious, mature manner. Plus, they are probably pretty polarizing, divisive, and in this American society of ours, where we shed any controversial material in order to promote a universal appeal, that is a de facto taboo. In other words, we shy away from it, in order not to offend people. That’s a problem. These things are allowed to grow and grow. Eventually, all that’s left are the questions specific to this or that tragedy, and we see the tree, but not the forest. There is no real attempt to see the underlying problems behind all of these tragedies.

We ask the more limited questions, and not the larger questions. That is why we do not learn anything from such incidents, except those details applying specifically to a particular news story.

The question is, should we just move on after shrugging our shoulders and thinking of this as an isolated incident, one of far too many that we have seen through the years? Or are we finally going to acknowledge that something is not merely a little off, but deeply, terribly wrong? When are we going to get serious about looking at the problems we seem to have, and why this kind of thing is considered just "another" random shooting?