February closed its doors with multiple shootings. This one, perpetrated by a 14 yr old was considered so ordinary by CNN that I had to search along the sidebar between Caitlyn Jenner stories and a cop-involved shooting to find it. Equally disappointing is the fact that another article, this one about a cop murdered on the first day of work, did not make the front page. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter anymore. It is the way rings were when I was a kid. People get shot, guns get overlooked, and the cycle continues. At least the very badly written and performed Chi-raq made an effort to show us the gravity of the numbers. Still, who is listening? I don’t think anyone is listening or truly worried. Superman doesn’t worry about catching a cold and Americans don’t worry about the lasting effects of our culture.
This latest shooting involves an 8th grader culture which through whatever form of social learning they partook in, recognized that bringing a gun to school and trying to take people out was a good idea. I get being fed up with bullying and the like, but I don’t get the mindset that says, “just shoot em” Of course, the shooter had to be crazy, right? Wrong. The problem with that thinking is that it dismisses any possible discourse about the conditions that led to the shooting. At first, everyone wants to know how someone can come to the point to shoot a bunch of people. Once the crazy label sticks, nobody cares about the conditions. The focus shifts to gun access and politics.
I feel like we live in a shoot em up culture that not only condones public violence but rewards it. In such a culture one cannot be surprised that people get hurt.