Another mass shooting: I'm cynical about it--shouldn't you be too?

 

I didn’t want to talk about foreign and domestic affairs again for a while, but my cynicism has gotten the best of me again after the news of the mass shooting in a Texas elementary school where 19 children and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old high school student who was allegedly “bullied” in school and made fun of because of his clothes. Where have we heard that story before? Columbine? Parkland? What has anyone done to stop bullying in schools? Oh, that’s right: put up billboards to stop online bullying of girls. That sure “fixes” that problem, doesn’t it?

Did the recent Buffalo mass shooting raise the national “consciousness” just because the shooter was white and the victims black? Well maybe it was grist for the media’s hypocritical mill, but we can suspect that most people have already moved on with their lives. Are white people more “relieved” that the shooter in Uvalde wasn’t white than feel actual “concern” for the victims? You betcha; at least this won’t be an annoyance to Hispanic-haters who would be forced to (or not) face the music about the result of anti-Hispanic prejudice—as if the El Paso shooting did any of that.

We are told that the shooter communicated online with a female using rap lingo to warn that he was about to do something “ill.” Yeah, that’s good ol’ American “culture” for you. We are told that Border agents were in the town far from the border to provide “aid and assistance” and not there to harass the mostly Hispanic residents; uh-huh. Incompetent law enforcement was already on the scene before the shooter even entered the school to start shooting, yet they couldn’t stop him?

So we’re back to Democratic politicians demanding “action,” and Republicans resorting to the usual name calling. The far-right and neo-Nazis will use this as an opportunity to blow their dog whistles, if not conveniently forgetting who the victims were; perhaps they will “joke” amongst themselves that this is how to “depopulate” the country of unwanted “vermin.” Yeah, I’m cynical about this. Shouldn’t you be?

Note that you rarely hear about mass shootings in Europe. Because they are more “civilized’? No, it’s because governments were likely afraid of armed mobs and banned the sale and possession of guns long ago; even Nazi storm troopers were only armed with clubs to beat on people. There was no “right to bear arms” or an accumulation of tens of millions of guns—the situation in this country that makes it far too late to stop gun violence. And let’s be clear about this: everyone owning guns like it’s the “wild west” doesn’t prevent mass shootings. Mass shooters don’t walk into situations where they know they will encounter armed resistance—they target victims who are the most vulnerable to their predations.

That is why mass shootings in this country will never stop—so everyone who pretends to be “concerned” about this should be cynical too.