Yes, another major school shooting. It seems like the locations change, the names are different, and the numbers dead and injured may vary.
Yet, the story remains largely the same. Someone with white supremacist leanings, and who should never have been allowed anywhere near a gun, still managed to get his hands on high capacity guns, and did as much damage as he could.
Once again, we are learning that there were missed signs. A t-shirt suggesting that he was a killing machine, and other troubling signs, apparently.
This time, ten people were killed. That means that ten people - nine kids and one teacher - got up yesterday morning and expected to have a relatively normal day at Santa Fe High School in Texas, but never made it home again. Now, they are being mourned by families and friends.
Of course, this is the United States, so that is why only the details of these stories seem to change, but these stories happen so frequently, that hardly anyone seems to express surprise.
Remember Columbine? Do you remember how shocking it was? Two kids with a morbid fascination with Nazism chose Hitler's birthday (April 20th) to set up what was then the worst school shooting in American history. People were truly shocked back then. They called themselves the "Trenchcoat Mafia." We learned that some kids had tormented them, and suddenly, bullying was not some bad thing that unfortunately existed and had to be endured, but was something deadly serious that could lead to serious danger down the road. People were shocked that "the boys next door" would be so capable of cold-blooded murder, of mass murder on such a scale. It was shocking that they could plan such an attack for a year or so, and keep it secret from everyone in their lives. Even then, there were signs, and many also expressed horror that those signs were missed. Signs like Eric Harris pointing an imaginary rifle at the camera during the class pictures, or at least one student being warned not to come to school the next day
Thirteen people were killed, not including the two kids responsible, who killed themselves. They planned to do more damage, to kill even more people. They wanted to kill roughly 500 students, and if they managed it, they wanted to get to the airport, hijack a plane, and crash it into Manhattan - two years and change before September 11th!
All of this truly shook the nation to it's core, like no mass shooting before, or perhaps even since. It was all that people could talk about.
Remember back then, when this nation was still apparently capable of being shocked by this kind of mindless violence, these kinds of random mass shootings? Remember how it seemed to trigger all sorts of conversations and debates? It actually was serious enough, that one could be forgiven for the belief that something actually was about to change.
These days, we have grown so desensitized to mass shootings like this in the United States that it has reached a point where one could be forgiven for the belief that nothing is actually about to change.
Remember back then, when this nation was still apparently capable of being shocked by this kind of mindless violence, these kinds of random mass shootings? Remember how it seemed to trigger all sorts of conversations and debates? It actually was serious enough, that one could be forgiven for the belief that something actually was about to change.
These days, we have grown so desensitized to mass shootings like this in the United States that it has reached a point where one could be forgiven for the belief that nothing is actually about to change.
Now, we get mass shootings, perhaps especially school shootings, and there are reactions almost immediately all over the internet. Some people automatically post things about how guns are not the problems, and don't even think about taking my guns, and don't tread on me, and so on and so forth. And some people surely also use this to spread false narratives about the number of school shootings or mass shootings with exaggerated statistics, as if they need exaggeration.
This time, some strange reactions did raise my eyebrows a bit, personally. Here are a couple:
- a local man wearing a Trump baseball cap and carrying an American flag and a gun came on site and was interviewed by some local journalists. When asked what he was doing there, he answered by saying "Get to the school, make America great again," When asked to elaborate, he said this: "Offering support," he said. "Just, 'God bless y'all' will go a long way right now for a lot of people." And off he walked with his Trump hat, his gun, and the American flag. Only in America.
- The Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, suggested that the problem with this, and presumably other, school shootings is that there are too many entrances and exits in the buildings. Of course, since there are hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of people spread across a large area, there is a need for multiple entrances and exits, and it also kind of helps when there's...like, you know...an emergency, such as a fire or....well, perhaps a school shooting. It seems like these NRA advocates might get tough against building entrances before they get tough on access to guns. Again, only in America.
- The Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, suggested that the problem with this, and presumably other, school shootings is that there are too many entrances and exits in the buildings. Of course, since there are hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of people spread across a large area, there is a need for multiple entrances and exits, and it also kind of helps when there's...like, you know...an emergency, such as a fire or....well, perhaps a school shooting. It seems like these NRA advocates might get tough against building entrances before they get tough on access to guns. Again, only in America.
- Who else is wondering how long it will take before NRA advocates and FOX News start attacking the survivors of the shooting at Santa Fe High School who inevitably will speak out against the kind of gun violence that they were forced to witness yesterday? How long before some of those students begin receiving death threats? I wish I was joking, but look at what happened with the Parkland kids. Yet again, only in America.
Here are some articles related to yesterday's mass school shooting in Texas that I took some information from in writing this blog entry and/or thought were interesting enough to be worth sharing here:
Texas Lt. Gov. Says ‘Too Many Entrances’ Possibly To Blame In School Shooting by Sarah Ruiz-Grossman, 05/18/2018:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dan-patrick-too-many-entrances-texas-school-shooting_us_5aff51a4e4b0463cdba1e09d
Man shows up to site of Santa Fe High School shooting with American flag, Trump hat and gun AOL.com Alex Lasker ,AOL.com•May 18, 2018:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-shows-sight-santa-fe-150800287.html
Dallas mayor blasts Trump and the GOP after Santa Fe school shooting- ‘It’s time for substantive action’ May 18, 2018 Jada Brown
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