On February 14, a 19-year old young man walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the small city of Parkland, Florida and started spraying bullets.
He took 17 lives, including those of both students and faculty; among them were a geography teacher who was killed as he tried to usher students back into his classroom when the gunfire started ringing out, as well as an assistant football coach who threw himself in front of students to protect them from a hail of bullets.
The murders took place on Valentine’s Day; a day intended to be about full and loving hearts replaced by shattered and broken ones.
You go through a whole circle of emotions when you read this kind of horrifying news. Your heart instantly breaks at the realization that 17 lives were ended in what has to be the coldest and most terrifying way to leave this earth; you become angry at all the people in positions of power who have the clout to truly do something about gun control and tackling mental health issues; and even though it sounds selfish to say it, you feel a sense of relief that you live in an area where this kind of tragedy doesn’t happen. (Fingers crossed so tightly it almost hurts)
But now, I almost just feel a sense of numbness because we’ve seen this senseless violence happen over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Was that enough ‘overs’? When you consider the statistics, not likely.
School shootings have seemed to become a terrible kind of ‘norm’ in the United States. That might be a grim way to look at it, but I really don’t know how else to describe it. The events of last week – the new St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, perhaps? – wound up being the 7th school shooting incident since 2018 started; a day short of just six weeks.
So what now? Well, with our easy access to news and the monstrous number of shootings that have taken place in the past decade, it’s become rather easy to predict what typically happens in the media, on the political and Hollywood side of things, and in our general society when the next horrible tragedy occurs.
First up is all the people on social media who want to make sure that *their* feelings and views are heard just as the news is trickling in about the latest massacre. See, it’s important to know that Sally in Wisconsin is thinking about the victims with a hashtag like #prayforthem, or that Bill in Oregon sends his “thoughts and prayers”. If those 18 seconds of typing or even copy-and-pasting weren’t enough support, then there’s always the “temporary profile picture” on Facebook where your main image is adorned with a special flag or symbol to tell people, “Hey, I just want you to know that I’M totally sending my condolences with this photo……at least until like next week or something when I change it back.”
Next up is the talking heads on TV; the news anchors who dissect every last piece of information related to the shooter and the incident, including perhaps what he or she had for breakfast that day, what their favourite colors are/were, etc. Then there are the late night talk show hosts who “get real” for the audience instead of the standard monologues full of tired Trump jokes. Some may shed tears (looking at you, Jimmy Kimmel) and some may actually do something notable like take Congress to task, but before long, it’s back to the comedy and sweeping all this “drama” under the rug.
Finally, we have the politicians. First we get the standard “thoughts and prayers” speech (sensing a pattern?) full of remorse and sympathy from the President, and he’ll then visit the site of the shooting to meet with families and local officials. We’ll know he’s done this because he’ll be flanked by about 6,000 cameras and press.
But after that, nothing will be done to attack why these shootings take place. Nothing about gun control and nothing about the mental health issues that cause someone to snap and do something like this.
I don’t offer my “thoughts and prayers” because it seems like a hollow exercise that offers no real remorse.
I don’t drape my social media pictures in special flags or heart-shaped symbols to tell people I don’t know that “I’m there for you”.
I don’t even really know what to do anymore because it just seems like no one important is listening or willing to do anything REAL about it.
It’s become almost a cycle of shoot, rant, rinse and repeat.
And the cycle goes on and on and on.
For this week, that’s been the Ruttle Report.
