There were four unrelated shootings in the news this week.
- In the first, a teenage boy knocks on the door of a house where he had driven to pickup his younger siblings. It was 10PM. He mistakenly had the wrong house. The owner, an 80 year old man opened the door and shot the kid. Then he shot him a second time after the kid went down.
- The next shooting happened in a different part of the country. A car with 3 teenage girls accidentally drove up a driveway in a rural area of New York. Once they realized it and began to drive out the homeowner came out and shot at the car, killing an 18 year old girl.
- In the third shooting, a family was playing with their young son in their front yard in a town in NC. Their ball rolled into a neighbor’s yard. The neighbor shot the child and her father who tried to shield her with his body.
- The fourth shooting happened in a grocery store parking lot in Texas. Some high school girls had just finished cheerleading practice and returned to the parking lot where they had left their cars. One girl jumped into the wrong car thinking was hers. A man was in the passenger seat. She realized her mistake, jumped out and got back into her friends car. The man walked up to her car, she rolled down the window to apologize and he shot her.
And, of course, Chicago had at least 10 people shot and 1 killed over the weekend – just like every weekend.
This is the America.
We have decided that this is OK.
Regardless of the reasons behind the shootings (a misanthrope, a known criminal, a lunatic, gang violence) we, the citizens of the US, have chosen not to do anything about these problems.
It is f***ing pathetic.
I don’t have any easy answers. The specifics for each of the cases above vary greatly. The common thread is that people are pulling out guns and shooting other human beings without regard.
Clearly, enough of us think that shooting people is a perfectly acceptable behavior since stories like these come up every week.
Are there too many guns? Duh. Of course.
Are there too many people who live in fear, are criminals with violent records or are mentally unstable who have access to guns? Yep.
Are we over exposed to divisive media, political rhetoric and online discourse that pushes us apart instead of together? Uh-huh.
Are we gonna do anything about it? Nope. At least not yet. Maybe someday.
Until then, the bodies keep dropping.