It Has Been 0 Days Since Your Last Mass Shooting

America has a gun problem, and it’s far past time to take action

It has been 537 days since the last time I wrote this article. In that time, there have been 545 mass shootings in the country I call home.

In 2019, more than one person per day has died from mass shootings.

The shootings where only one or two people die, or where less than ten are injured, barely even make the news anymore. Yesterday there were five mass shootings, injuring 48 people and killing 12. The only one I’d heard of was Dayton. Mass murder isn’t even news anymore unless it’s in the double digits.

As of July 31, 2019, 248 mass shootings had occurred in the US in 2019, averaging out to 1.2 shootings per day. These are shootings in which 3+ people were shot, excluding the perpetrators, at one location, at roughly the same time. Of the 979 people who were shot, 246 had died. Five days later, we’ve reached a milestone with over 1,000 people shot, with 22 people killed in El Paso and 9 in Dayton over the weekend.

Mass murder isn’t even news anymore unless it’s in the double digits.

These statistics blow my mind. No matter how many times it happens, shock manages to worm its way in to the terrible, sickening mixture of emotions I carry with me for days afterwards. We are experiencing a national tragedy, an epidemic, a nightmare. I read story after story and vacillate wildly between anger and despair, rage and complete heartbreak, and when I feel bile rising in my throat, I minimize the window, and then I feel lucky that I can even do that because it wasn’t my child or my best friend, or my boyfriend — not this time. And then that thought makes me want to vomit all over again.

I see a country reacting to terrorism perpetrated by our own with inaction and apathy.

But I keep looking because my reaction is human and it is right. This is enraging and sickening. I keep looking because no matter how awful and helpless and grief-stricken and angry this information makes me feel, it is nothing compared to the feelings of the hundreds of people who had the worst day of their life yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. I keep looking because I am trying to understand something that cannot be understood.

America is racist, and it’s literally killing us

We need to stop pretending that these shootings have nothing to do with this ingrained, systemic, institutionalized racism that is plaguing our country and being encouraged by our president.

Our government’s lack of response through legal and policy changes has everything to do with the fact that the people who have perpetrated all of the deadliest mass shootings in recent years have been white males. There is no doubt in my mind that what Amarnath Amarasingam said on Twitter is true. If this number of people were being killed by Mexicans or by ISIS or by non-white perpetrators, policy change would already be in place.

The El Paso shooter posted a 4 page document online before he took action. The document was filled with racist and white nationalist hatred towards Mexicans and immigrants. It was also full of ideas straight from the mouth (or thumbs, more accurately) of our president.

Some of the language of the manifesto reflects ideas from President Trump, Fox News and the modern Republican party. For example, the document warns of a “Hispanic invasion” and says Democrats are using “open borders” and “free healthcare for illegals” to attract new voters.

Make no mistake, this was a hate crime. In response to the shootings this weekend, Trump suggested that our legislators consider linking gun legislation with immigration policy. What that means or what it would look like were not part of the conversation. It’s just another way for him to draw a false connection between violence and immigrants , which does nothing more than fuel the exact fire he’s claiming to want to put out.

This is not a mental health problem

Our country’s lack of resources and assistance for citizens with mental health issues is certainly a problem, but it’s not this problem.

Trump called for laws to ensure that those “judged a grave risk to public safety do not have access to firearms” and declared “mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.”

But he stopped short of addressing other measures that gun control advocates argue are urgently needed, including closing loopholes in required background checks for gun buyers and banning large ammunition magazines.

Characterizing mass murderers as mentally ill (which, by the way, only seems to happen when they are white), only further stigmatizes people who cope with mental illness. As American Psychological Association President Rosie Phillips Davis pointed out:

“Routinely blaming mass shootings on mental illness is unfounded and stigmatizing. Research has shown that only a very small percentage of violent acts are committed by people who are diagnosed with, or in treatment for, mental illness.”

“The rates of mental illness are roughly the same around the world, yet other countries are not experiencing these traumatic events as often as we face them. One critical factor is access to, and the lethality of, the weapons that are being used in these crimes. Adding racism, intolerance and bigotry to the mix is a recipe for disaster.”

Then again, this is a mental health problem in some ways — Americans are experiencing a new and terrible kind of anxiety of being in public places.

This is not a global problem

The Onion has taken to posting the same article each time this happens, with a different photo and city byline. Underneath, the recommended stories section is a sad commentary on how things are now.

We have a president in office who can’t even remember the city in which a shooting occurred. Our commander in chief stands on his dais and responds to an attendees shouted suggestion to shoot immigrants by joking about it, then holds a press conference “condemning” the very bigotry and white supremacy his joking reinforces.

America stands alone when it comes to gun violence and mass shootings. Why?

As an article in The New York Times explained, “The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns.” The 4.4 percent of the global population residing in American own 42 percent of the world’s guns.

This is a gun problem.

In Dayton, local officers responded to the shooting in half a minute. 9 people still died. It took 30 seconds for 9 families to lose their loved ones. Because the shooter had an automatic weapon. Because it is easy to get a weapon that can kill 9 people and hurt dozens more in half a minute.

I am tired of the argument that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” If that’s the case, why does almost every Government office and public agency prohibit firearms on its premises?

Oh, and, by the way, guns — all types of guns, from BB-guns on up — are banned in the White House, in the halls of Congress, in courtrooms across the country, including the Supreme Court, and in every governmental office in every city, town, and hamlet. That’s how institutional hypocrisy works. -Ramona Grigg

We are living in a world where parents who are shopping for school supplies are presented with the option of bulletproof backpacks. I am done arguing about whether people should have “the right to bear arms.” The answer is no. People should not be allowed to own guns they never use and never need. Having guns just for target practice? Human lives are more important than your right to a hobby weapon. I would gladly give up any one of my hobbies if it concretely meant people would be safer.

People should not be allowed to own guns they never use and never need.

I’m done with the arguments that people always kill people, that there is still the black market, that people can probably 3-D print a gun. So what? That doesn’t mean that restricting guns won’t help. It’s not an either/or situation. We can reduce the risk of gun violence and mass shootings to an astronomical degree, and you’re telling me we shouldn’t do it because some might still happen? That’s asinine.

Restricting guns would give us more time to deal with other issues. Shifting our culture’s focus from “people deserve to have their guns” to “people deserve to keep their lives” could start a serious, and much needed, shift in paradigm.

Instead of solutions, we hear regurgitation of the same old “violent video games” rhetoric which has been disproved over and over and over.

Instead of blaming toxic masculinity, racism, our millions of guns, and the horrifying rise in white supremacy this country has seen under its current “leadership,” we hear soundbites from the President about how we should make policy changes to ensure that the death penalty is on the table for the perpetrators. As if these perpetrators care if it’s a capital crime or not. Making changes that prevent these things from happening in the first place would be smarter.

How to take action

I remember clearly experiencing terrorism for the first time, the helpless horror of the morning of September 11, 2001. I watched a country, wounded and broken, come together and help each other to try and feel safer, to carry each other through our fear, grief, and doubt. Now, I see a country reacting to terrorism perpetrated by our own with inaction and apathy. I feel helpless. So, what do we do?

Many of the actions focus around making changes to the politicians who are representing us. Aaron Rupar explains why in his Vox article about the Gilroy shooting last week:

What would’ve prevented the shooting — or at the least made its outcome less devastating — would have been keeping a military-style weapon out of the shooter’s hands to begin with. But as my colleague German Lopez explained, the episode illustrates the limit of what states can do on their own in the realm of gun control laws:

“The problem … lies in federal and other states’ laws. As long as those are weaker, there’s going to be a limit to how well any stricter gun laws can work at the state level — for the simple reason that someone can always freely travel across the border to obtain a gun, whether for personal use or to sell to others. (This is illegal trafficking under federal law, but because other states’ laws are so weak, to the point they might not even require any sort of paper trail to complete a gun purchase, it’s really difficult to enforce the federal law.)

The real solution, then, lies in changes to federal law. Only Congress and the president can set a baseline, such as universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and requiring a license to buy and own a firearm, that all states will have to follow.”

I’m done being “civil” and “rational” and trying to have “reasonable conversations.” My question is simple. Do you value your gun over my child’s life, over my life, over your own life? We are failing miserably, and it’s time for change. It’s past time for action. Until we realize that and work hard to change it, there will always be another one.

And another one.

And another one.

This morning in El Paso, a 2 year old toddler woke up in the morning to a world absent of his mother. Parents waking in Dayton experienced a split second of normalcy before remembering their world was shattered this weekend. We are letting this happen, and you might be next.

Don’t miss a thing! Sign up for my weekly newsletter here.

Recommended Reading…