Shooter

I am always hesitant to write on topical subjects. A political gaffe, celebrity snaffu, sporty sports thing, all of these seem rather temporal. To me such subjects are in direct conflict with the inherent endurance of the written word, and far be it from me to betray its will. Until recently the subject of mass shootings would be lumped with the aforementioned topics. Tragic and troubling yes, but not something that happens with great frequency. Unfortunately one cannot go more than two weeks without reading about a disgruntled psychopath taking a gun and indiscriminately killing innocents. Such violence has become endemic of the Western world, America in particular. I can think of no better allegory for the moral decay of our society and desensitization of the individual than a mass shooting.

By now we all know the drill. Someone with severe mental illness who clearly had no business owning a gun takes to the streets, crazed manifesto left behind more so out of obligation than desire to be understood. I mean, c'mon, have you ever read one of those things? These dudes don't even proofread their shit. Bang bang, X amount of people dead, community in mourning, President sends condolences in between holes 11 and 12, yadda yadda. After offing themselves or getting gunned down by cops having their most fun in years, the locals are left only a few brief moments of quiet, organic grieving. Once the initial tragedy is over a more protracted and artificial one rises from its ashes like the lamest fucking phoenix you have ever seen.

Camera crews from across the nation pour into whatever sleepy town is still reeling from having members of their community slaughtered. National pundits summon hours of looking-somber practice as they look somber, a grieving parent pleads for stricter gun controls, a cartoonishly conservative NRA representative demands looser gun controls, Wolf Blitzer watches over it all with the glazed eyes of one who has seen much suffering. Or one who works at CNN.

What is it about mass shooters that makes network news eat up every case like a fat kid eating... like, way too much food and stuff? (I don't know what it is recently but I can't make fat people analogies to save my life. Swear to god I used to knock that shit out of the park.) It can't just be the death toll, since the average network news ticker will casually sneak in the 900 brown people from Brownpeopleiztan killed in a tsunami in between news of a stupid cute puppy doing something stupid cute and Selena Gomez farting. Natural disasters do not illicit the type of tragedy-induced-news-watching the media loves to pump out, and neither do acts of terrorism in countries not America. An American mass shooting strikes all the perfect chords needed to sing a song of sorrow. Not too far away to seem irrelevant, not too close to seem urgent. Not too fast to seem accidental, not too protracted to seem institutional. 

As mentioned earlier, usually just after the tragedy has occurred a tearful parent or significant other or life coach will plead, demand for tighter restrictions on gun laws so as to avert further loss of life. One must question the sincerity of these people. So you didn't give two shits about gun rights until your child/spouse/life coach was killed? That's like those people who have a relative who falls ill to some rare disease and then start a charity or raise awareness to find a cure for said rare disease. They don't really want a cure, they just want a cure for their relative. While I agree that there should be some tightening on who is allowed to carry around something that only exists to end one's existence, the problem of mass shooters is ultimately one of communication. A mass shooter usually suffers from mental illness or is just a raging asshole, both problems that can be dealt with sans bloodshed with proper communication. The responsibility for said communication falls on the media, community, family, and individual in that order. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have the boorishly tasteless, hopelessly delusional crusaders who feel now would be a good time to remind people that guns are, like, totally radical. Totes rad, brah. When these characters start crawling out of whatever ass backwards red state where QUEERS CAN'T GET NO MARRIED CUZ JESUS they come from I start playing a drinking game. Every time one of them says "second amendment," "freedom," or "Obama taking away our rights," take a shot. So far I've only died of alcohol poisoning twice. If they wish to believe guns do a good job of protecting people, fine, believe all you want. Ignoring the fact that only a very small percentage of gun related homicides are in self defense, guns are not really the issue. People are the issue. Move the people pendulum, not the firearm pendulum.

Both sides, caricatured liberals and caricatured conservatives, are so embarrassingly dense it saddens me. I do not mean that metaphorically either; I'm legit bummed that human beings can become so entrenched in their stupidity, in their madness, that crazy becomes the norm. Speaking solely in hyperbole becomes an acceptable form of conversation. Indignation an acceptable reaction to disagreement. These are the people who bumper stickers were made for. No one likes bumper stickers.

Any loss of life is tragic, but the deepest mourning should be reserved for those closest to the victims. It is not something for a nation to observe, to analyze. We are talking about the loss of human life, not what some smug dipshit said on Twitter to another smug dipshit. Although, can you believe the nerve of Smug Dipshit A? I can't wait to read Yahoo's news report on Smug Dipshit B's counter barb. Enthralling. Why does one's suffering need to be broadcast by news networks? That's not news, that's private. Back the fuck off CNN and Fox News (MSNBC is usually just playing with finger paint and eating glue in a corner), peace is much easier to achieve without 20 cameras in one's face. The dead should not serve as fodder for national news networks. 

I'm not one who believes tragedies happen so we can learn from them, but I believe tragedies will happen again if we do not learn from them. The predictable national discourse does not exactly instill confidence on our ability to learn from mistakes, but I have not given up on humanity just yet. Faith shaken, hope endures.